"Concretizing Sacheon City's Aerospace Complex City Construction Plan"
The delegation of five public officials from Sacheon City, including Mayor Park Dong-sik of Sacheon, Gyeongnam Province, returned home after completing a nine-day official overseas business trip to France from January 31 to February 8.
The main purpose of this trip was to visit Toulouse, France, a role model for the "aerospace complex city" currently under construction centered on Sacheon City, where the Aerospace Administration is located, and to benchmark its development.
The delegation departed from Sacheon on January 31, traveled via Incheon Airport, and arrived in Paris. During the Paris schedule until February 3, they visited the "Le Bourget Aerospace Museum," the world's oldest aerospace museum, and the headquarters and engine factory of "Safran," the world's leading engine manufacturer, to observe the history of human aerospace and the latest cutting-edge technology. Safran Group, a leading French aircraft engine specialist and defense industry company, operates 276 sites in 27 countries and employs approximately 92,000 people worldwide.
Following Paris, the delegation moved to Toulouse on February 4 and visited "French Civil Aviation Services (FRACS)" located within the French National School of Civil Aviation (ENAC) and "Exotrail," a promising startup in the space technology sector. Exotrail is a company that attracted attention when the First Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT of Korea visited it a year ago.
On February 5, they visited the "Aeroscopia" museum operated by Airbus and the "Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space (ISAE-SUPAERO)," a higher education institution that trains excellent aerospace personnel (engineers, research masters, professional masters, and doctoral candidates), gaining a comprehensive view of the aerospace industry's development and learning about talent cultivation systems.
On February 6, they visited startups within the "Thales Alenia Toulouse Center" and the startup growth space "B612." Both B612 and Exotrail, visited on the 4th, are expected to play significant roles in establishing Sacheon City's future space industry development strategy.
On the final benchmarking day, February 7, the delegation visited Toulouse City Hall to discuss urban planning and policies integrated with the aerospace sector, concretizing the master plan for the construction of the "aerospace complex city" and concluding the business trip before returning home.
Mayor Park Dong-sik stated, "The purpose of this visit was to see firsthand how Toulouse, once a representative iron and steel city in France, grew into a world-class aerospace city and to concretize Sacheon City's aerospace complex city construction plan. We were able to obtain a blueprint for this." He added, "What was surprising was that both Safran and Exotrail are paying attention to the background of the Korean Aerospace Administration being located in Sacheon and expressed their desire to cooperate with companies in Sacheon."
He continued, "We plan to actively utilize Toulouse's example, where harmony between new and old industries has been well achieved, in creating Sacheon City's aerospace industry ecosystem. Since Toulouse is also interested in the process of establishing the Korean Aerospace Administration (KASA) in Sacheon, as well as incentives for the Satellite Development Innovation Center and Knowledge Industry Center, we will actively promote sister city relations between the two cities." He emphasized, "We will establish customized policies suited to our city's characteristics and actively fulfill the role of a central local government leading Korea to become one of the world's top five space powers centered on the Aerospace Administration."
Based on the experience gained from this trip, Sacheon City is expected to further concretize its aerospace complex city construction plan and accelerate the attraction of related industries and talent cultivation. It will be interesting to see how Sacheon City's future blueprint will be realized.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
