By Kim Yoo-chul
SK Group opened a creative economy innovation center to cultivate smart farming in the Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City, Tuesday.
The “Sejong Innovation Center” will play a key role in establishing a national hub for patents, fostering agricultural products using information and communication technologies in the region and supporting regional startups.
SK said it has teamed up with the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, 39 startups and government agencies to push agricultural businesses using SK-patented information technology.
SK expects the partnership to serve as a vehicle to bolster the partnership between government agencies and startups for the development of innovative technologies and solutions, thus opening up new opportunities for growth in target markets.
Under the agreement, the parties will build agricultural platforms and create ecosystem to boost businesses combined agricultural products and technology.
This is the 14th creative innovation center as the government is stepping up its effort to push the country's leading conglomerates to establish facilities for shared growth with regional cities and local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The two-story SK center will have incubating rooms, research laboratories for the Internet of Things (IoT), smart-learning box schools and small farms. SK will invest up to 20 billion won to help those projects bring tangible results, it said.
This is the second SK-managed creative center after it opened the first such facilities in Daejeon. SK said top management of its key affiliates from SK Telecom to SK hynix will handle the projects.
SK spokesman said it has dispatched 30 employees to better care for the two regional centers. The Sejong center will have CCTVs to check the humidity and temperature in farms using its information technology.
“For example, farms will be wired and smartphones will be used to control key conditions for agricultural products. This will help them save costs and increase efficiency,” it said.
The Sejong center will build a platform to share info such as price details by the end of this year and build an application to be used in creating smart farms.
The use of smart farms will be expanded into fisheries and others according to demand.
“The cooperation is significant for the nation. It will provide a chance for customers to experience innovative technologies, while playing a pivotal role in revitalizing rural economy,” SK Telecom CEO Jang Dong-hyun said.