The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of South Korea announced on Jan. 29 that it will start accepting applications from Jan. 30 for this year’s K-City Network Global Collaboration Project. This initiative aims to establish a smart city cooperation network with foreign nations and support the overseas expansion of South Korean companies.
Launched in 2020, the K-City Network project involves applying the South Korean smart city model to help develop smart cities abroad. It supports foreign cities in establishing smart city plans or conducting feasibility studies, and aids in the local demonstration of domestically developed smart solutions to foster the overseas export of South Korean businesses. So far, the project has undertaken 41 collaborative projects in 23 countries.
For this year’s competition, projects will be categorized into two types: plan establishment and overseas demonstration. The competition aims to select up to eight projects. The plan establishment projects, as per the K-city Network Project Revision reported to the National Smart City Committee in October last year, will now accept smart city project proposals from foreign governments throughout the year and introduce a pre-consultation system.
For the Overseas Demonstration type, this year’s plan is to expand to six projects, promoting the international export of businesses and enabling various domestically commercialized solutions to spread abroad. Each project will receive support ranging from 200 to 400 million won.
The K-City Network project will be officially announced on Jan. 30. While plan establishment project proposals will be accepted throughout the year, only those submitted by April will be reviewed for this year’s support. Proposals received after May will be considered for support in the 2025 cycle.