▲ An Seung-nam, Mayor of Guri City

As part of the effort, An and his 14 attaches and industry officials paid a visit to Qingdao, China for 3 days and 4 nights from 27th last month alongside attending the western coastal new district benchmarking. The new district is sized 202㎢, the 9th state level new district and the tour group dropped by the Economic Cooperation Zone and the Passive House Center located within the area. 

An official of the district said “the Economic Cooperation Zone is designed based on German’s Industry 4.0 that promotes life science and eco-friendly low carbon and renewable energy. The Passive House Center is designed for minimizing the leak of energy and the passive house technique is to be applied to normal houses soon. Also, we’ve already recovered the money we invested in this.” 

Another official of the district said “We welcome the mayor and his attaches to this new western coastal district where beers, movies and MICE industry are well mingled. I hope that the district and Guri City would make cooperation projects in many areas and further develop the relations into a sisterhood.” 

An said “Guri City is relatively small but has a great interest in new town buildings such as HD design industrial complex and techno valley. We decided it was a good idea to benchmark a number of successful cases home and abroad.” 

When the tour group reached to Dream Town Internet Village, an official of the Startup Center in the district introduced “Around 4,000 teams have opened up their businesses on the support of the Startup Center of which 1,200 teams showing a high success rate through our incubating program.”

An official of Technode said “Technode is focusing on unsparing support for AI, medical technology, big data and block chain. Unlike government-led support in Korea, private businesses are supporting startup here on the principle not to interfere except the support only.” 

A prospective young Korean startup Lee Tae-bum said “I felt the startup support system in the district is running better than the Korean counterpart. It was good to hear that the support was led by private businesses without interference. I hope the big Korean companies take initiative in creating this win-win business structure.” 

The tour group then moved to Shanghai to visit the Tencent WeStart Center, Shinchungi Soho 3Q and other couple of centers to learn their startup support programs. Hong Jin-woo, who organized this visit, said “I’m convinced that we could bring substantial results if we find just right support programs for Guri City.” The tour group lastly paid a visit to the Alibaba Museum.
After the tour, An said “Hangzhou Dream Town impressed me greatly. It created startup spaces for young people through urban regeneration. I feel the need to promote the root industry in Guri City into a new industrial hub for young startups.”

An added “Guri City will closely work together with the industries and the citizens to create better and customized jobs and working environment for young people.”