Government Provides 61.5 Billion KRW Support for R&D in Knowledge Service Industries Including E-commerce

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Haeyoung] The government will support the development of core technologies in the knowledge service industry sectors such as e-learning and e-commerce with more than 60 billion KRW this year.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on the 23rd that it will invest 61.5 billion KRW, a 15% increase compared to last year, in the "2022 Knowledge Service Industry Technology Development Project."

The Knowledge Service Industry Technology Development Project aims to support the development of core technologies in the knowledge service industry to advance existing industries such as manufacturing and create new service industries. E-learning, consulting, packaging, and e-commerce are included in the knowledge service industry.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy will first announce 14 new support target projects on the 24th, including 4 service core technology development projects and 10 service industry convergence advancement projects, and accept applications from companies, research institutes, and universities.

The total support scale for new projects this year, including 6 additional new support target projects linked to creative Business Ideas (BI) to be announced separately later, is 8.6 billion KRW.

For the existing 65 ongoing projects, 52.9 billion KRW will be supported.

New projects will be promoted through procedures such as recruiting research and development institutions by the 24th of next month and final selection of institutions in March. In particular, this year, support will be strengthened for manufacturing convergence services for added value such as improving productivity and efficiency of existing industries, non-face-to-face services such as remote work and home activities, and edutech fields such as intelligent learning, remote education, and training.

Since 2009 until last year, about 310 projects have been supported with a total investment of 428.7 billion KRW under the Knowledge Service Industry Technology Development Project.

Services developed through this project include Bank Salad, a financial benefit optimization asset management service, AI investment and asset management services, and AI Semmungchi, the world's first Hangul recognition AI math tutor.

Detailed information can be found on the websites of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology from the 24th.