[Financial News] Busan, which has been continuously making comprehensive efforts for digital transformation, has been evaluated as the smartest city in Korea for the second consecutive year.
The city of Busan announced on the 27th that it ranked 13th globally and 2nd in Asia among 77 major cities worldwide in the 10th evaluation of the Global Smart City Index (SCI) by Z/Yen, a global consulting agency in the UK.
The Global Smart City Index, which started being published in July 2020, evaluates major cities worldwide using 132 statistics related to intelligence and expert surveys. The evaluation results are released twice a year, in the first and second halves.
Since first entering the rankings four years ago, Busan has continually risen in position.
This time ranking 13th for the fourth consecutive time in the top 20 globally signifies that Busan has firmly established itself as a leading smart city, according to the city’s analysis.
For the first time in Asia, Busan surpassed Hong Kong, securing the 2nd position after Singapore.
Seoul dropped one rank from the previous evaluation, coming in at 30th, thus trailing behind Busan.
The city analyzed that Busan’s overall competitiveness increased significantly as, for the first time, all six evaluation items entered excellent rankings. Busan ranked 6th in corporate environment, 8th in human resources, 8th in financial support, 10th in infrastructure, and 8th in reputation and prestige.
Significantly, the entry of the advanced technology category into the rankings for the first time demonstrates a smooth digital transformation in the rapidly changing industrial landscape, showing the continuous growth potential as a smart city.
Among the index’s three evaluation perspectives, innovation support, which demonstrates the regulatory or supportive approach to the technology industry, moved up from 15th to 13th, indicating excellent deregulation and support policies toward becoming a smart city.
Meanwhile, in July, the city established a One-Stop Business Support Unit under the Digital Economy Office to build an integrated business support system. This aims to remove obstacles to large-scale investment projects and strengthen field-oriented business regulatory innovations, striving to make Busan a business-friendly city.
Additionally, centering on the Digital Economy Office, which oversees the ‘intelligence’ and ‘digitalization’ of the city’s economy, the city focuses on fostering digital innovation technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), power semiconductors, secondary batteries, robotics, and biotechnology.
The city is also focusing on attracting major corporations in advanced new industries that will change the economic landscape of Busan, such as the Lotte AI automated logistics center and the Samsung Heavy Industries R&D center.
Furthermore, Busan is promoting various digital industries by expanding digital infrastructure with future new industry innovation clusters across regions, creating a green data center cluster essential for the deep tech industry, advancing the Centum 2 district urban convergence special zone, establishing the Busan Digital Asset Exchange, building smart healthcare and big data centers, setting up a quantum science and technology center, and operating the ‘Busan Digital Innovation Academy’ to nurture digital creative talent.
Mayor Park Heong-joon said, “This evaluation confirmed once again that Busan is ranked among the world’s leading smart cities,” and added, “We will continue to do our best to fully implement a virtuous digital economic ecosystem and leap forward as a leading city in digital transformation and a global central city.”