Nowon-gu Mayor Oh Seung-rok Takes Steps to Establish Biomedical Cluster

Nowon-gu Signs MOU with Korean American Biomedical Industry Consortium (KABIC) for Successful Biomedical Cluster Development

District Mayor Oh Seung-rok Signs MOU with KABIC in Boston, USA

From the 15th to the 24th, benchmarking U.S. bio-industry cooperation and urban regeneration cases

Nowon-gu (Mayor Oh Seung-rok) announced that on the 17th at 4 p.m. local time, it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Korean American Biomedical Industry Consortium (KABIC), a group of experts in the biomedical field, in Boston, USA.

The district has set a major administrative goal to overcome its inherent limitation as a bedroom community of Seoul and transform into a self-sufficient city by developing the ‘Seoul Nowon Biomedical Cluster (SN-BMC, hereinafter referred to as the biomedical complex)’ on the 247,000㎡ site of Changdong Vehicle Depot and Dobong Driver’s License Test Site, and has been promoting the project since 2019.

This MOU was signed ahead of the full-scale launch of the project to establish a foundation for international exchange and cooperation in the bio-industry sector, with Mayor Oh Seung-rok and district officials visiting the U.S. for eight days and seven nights.

The counterpart, KABIC, was established in 2011 in the Boston area and is a non-profit organization in the biomedical field with about 200 Korean American bio-industry professionals from the New England region as members.

Through this agreement, both parties agreed to cooperate in ▲building an international bio network ▲sharing trends and foundational environment information in the biomedical field ▲international consultation and joint research ▲operating talent development programs such as boot camps and facilitating human exchange.

Upon arrival in the U.S. on the 15th, Mayor Oh Seung-rok and district officials toured bio-related industrial facilities in Boston prior to the signing of the MOU.

Boston is recognized as a global center of the bio-industry, where industry, universities, research institutes, and hospitals form a large ecosystem, creating over 110,000 jobs and generating an economic effect of approximately 2 trillion dollars.

Mayor Oh engaged in in-depth discussions with experts and scholars at the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC), Harvard Medical School (HMS), and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) about the success factors of Boston’s bio-ecosystem and ways to apply them to Nowon.

He also visited the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), which houses numerous shared offices, and Lab Central Inc., home to about 125 startups, and held a meeting with the Korean American Society of Pharmaceutical Professionals (KASBP), which includes about 820 members from U.S. bio-pharmaceutical companies and academia, to seek advice on the public role and effective support methods necessary to attract innovative industries to the region.

The district plans to complete the conceptual plan for the biomedical complex development project by utilizing the international cooperation network and Boston cases gained from this trip, and actively reflect the district’s opinions in the preliminary Seoul city feasibility study scheduled for the second half of the year.

Mayor Oh Seung-rok will stay in Boston and New York until the 24th to continue benchmarking schedules aimed at concretizing key projects of the 8th local government term, including ‘cultural and leisure facility development’ and ‘urban regeneration’ projects.

In particular, before the construction of the indoor sports center ‘Jump,’ which will begin design this year and be completed in 2025, he will visit indoor leisure facilities in Boston to plan detailed aspects of the project. Ideas gained here will be incorporated into the district’s project to create a complex sports space that promotes physical activity among children and adolescents.

Additionally, he will visit successful urban regeneration cases such as major public libraries, ‘Chelsea Market,’ which revitalized the local commercial district by converting an old factory, ‘High Line Park,’ a linear park reborn from an elevated railway, and ‘New York Hudson Yards,’ a complex development of a railway vehicle depot.

Mayor Oh Seung-rok of Nowon-gu said, “Boston is similar to Nowon-gu in scale, location, and background, making it a role model for urban regeneration and the future vision of the region. Starting with the MOU signed in Boston, we will strengthen international networks and the project foundation to successfully develop a biomedical complex in Nowon.”