KOTRA Opens Korea's First 'Trade Big Data Platform'

AI Development Utilizing 1 Billion Export Statistics Data

(Photo by KOTRA)

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Ji-hee] KOTRA announced on the 27th that it will operate a big data system for data-driven export support. The export support service plans to strengthen services to enable scientific decision-making in the global market by collecting and analyzing accumulated unstructured data and utilizing customs and global export statistics data.

First, intelligent services will be provided, such as recommending promising markets to export companies and providing automated market reports using artificial intelligence. As export marketing activities through non-face-to-face channels such as video consultations and e-commerce have become urgent due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the promising market recommendation function is expected to help small and medium-sized enterprises discover alternative markets.

Kwon Pyung-oh, President of KOTRA, said, “Smart export support services using the big data platform will be fully provided to companies,” adding, “We will further strengthen KOTRA’s experience and capabilities accumulated through export support projects with collective intelligence and data.”

In June last year, KOTRA launched a big data platform construction project aimed at “creating a digital trade and investment business ecosystem.” Various infrastructures such as hardware and software were introduced, and AI-based intelligent analysis models were developed. Additionally, an analysis platform was built, and efforts were made to manage data quality by establishing data governance to enhance data value.

KOTRA has accumulated extensive export support experience. Overseas market information collected from 129 trade centers in 84 countries worldwide amounts to about 76,000 cases. It also holds consultation information collected from over 300,000 overseas company data and approximately 500 annual export consultation meetings, trade delegations, and exhibitions. Furthermore, by building a platform capable of integrated analysis of over 1 billion global export statistics data, multidimensional analysis has become possible.

Moreover, KOTRA developed intelligent services by installing an AI engine on the big data platform. Through this, services such as ▲overseas promising market recommendations ▲export AI reports ▲corporate activity indices ▲intelligent automatic matching are provided.

On the previous day, KOTRA held a webinar to pre-release the big data platform to potential export companies, exporters, and citizen participation innovation groups. Ryu Jae-won, Head of KOTRA’s Trade Infrastructure Headquarters, explained, “KOTRA will transform into a data-centered trade promotion organization based on the big data platform,” adding, “The more detailed information our small and medium-sized enterprises input using the system, the more accurate the AI services will be.”

The newly opened big data platform corresponds to the first phase of the entire project, and the second phase will begin in the second half of this year. In the second phase, trade AI will be advanced to provide customized and intelligent export package services. Additionally, a database including 100,000 domestic export companies and 1 million overseas companies will be built, and investment AI will be developed to create an evolved trade and investment business ecosystem.