New Government, New Tech Venture Push

Published on 2013/02/17 | Source

Korea will greet a new president (our first female president!) at the end of the month and according to the Wall Street Journal, she sees information technology and science as so important to the future of Korea that she's creating a new ministry just to handle these two areas.

The new ministry will also take a step forward in supporting entrepreneurs. There have been several successful Korean startups including social commerce website Ticket Monster, mobile messenger app Kakao Talk, and many more, which you can check out in an earlier blog post.

It hasn't always been easy for entrepreneurs to attract seed capital from investors, as the "tech entrepreneur concept" has been relatively dormant in Korea for the past 40 years. This means that while we may have many young entrepreneurs with engenius ideas, they've had trouble getting the resources they need to realize those ideas.

Park Geun-hye's government plans to create a business environment where small business owners can effectively secure funds through private angel investors and venture capitalists. They are also working on supporting the growth of tech venture firms by giving easier access to loans or providing them a more direct path to getting listed on the Kosdaq,Korea's tech-related stock market.

Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/128VClg

Several Korean conglomerates and banks are supporting this move as well. KB Bank, Korea's largest lender, is planning to create a special fund for entrepreneurs and KT, the leading integrated wired/wireless telecommunication company in Korea will also planning to operate a fund in the future. Both have estimated worths in the billions of dollars.

About the author by Sophie Choi

Born in Korea and raised on three different continents, I have always been enthusiastic to share the uniqueness of Korean culture and design. On top of that, the advanced level of Korean technology makes me proud to call myself Korean and motivates me to spread technology related news to more people around the world. The list of things I like (and like to do) is endless: Shopping, Gummy jellies, Lilies... and it goes on

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