Busan City Hosts 2nd Global Hub City Youth Hackathon... Grand Prize Goes to Hairo Team

The winner of the "2nd Busan Global Hub City Youth Hackathon," jointly hosted by Busan City and KNN from August 20 to 21 at the Busan Contents Korea Lab, has been decided.

Now in its second year, this competition was organized to share the vision of building Busan as a global hub city with young people and to provide opportunities for policy proposals and participation beyond simply collecting ideas. A total of 15 teams, with more than 60 participants aged between 18 and 39, presented creative policy proposals across five categories: global logistics, global finance, global digital and advanced industries, global culture and tourism, and an open category. The call for participants, which ran until August 3, attracted 51 teams and over 200 applicants, reflecting strong interest.

The event featured a vision lecture on "Global Hub City Busan," expert advisory programs, team brainstorming and networking, and three rounds of hackathon discussions. Participants refined their policy ideas and presented them on the morning of the second day. Seven teams were selected as winners through a judging process.

The grand prize went to the Hairo team, which proposed the creation of the "Busan Global Digital Nomad Hub" in the open category. The top excellence award was given to the "Operation: BeyondBusan" team in the digital and advanced industry category for their "Ship Real-World Asset Token (RWA) Policy." In addition, two teams received excellence awards (the Globe team in the culture and tourism category, and the Sale to Zero team in the finance category), and three teams received encouragement awards (the Optn team in the culture and tourism category, the Gloport team in the logistics category, and the Bufinder team in the finance category). In total, seven teams were recognized, with a total prize pool of 7 million KRW, including 2 million KRW for the grand prize winner.

The city plans to share the ideas generated during the competition with relevant departments and organizations and actively incorporate them into policy development.

Lee Kyungdeok, Director of Planning for Busan City, stated, "The creative ideas of young people will serve as a foundation for enhancing Busan's future competitiveness as a global hub city," and added, "We will continue to provide platforms where young people and citizens can directly propose and discuss policies."

He also emphasized, "We will do our utmost to ensure the prompt enactment of the Special Act on the Busan Global Hub City."