Koo Hyuk-chae, First Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT (led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon), visited the Seoul Bio Hub inside the Seoul Hongneung Special Research and Development Zone (Innopolis) on the afternoon of September 9, examining the field of youth startup support and holding a roundtable with young entrepreneurs. The aim was to reflect voices from the field in policy.
 [코리안투데이] First Vice Minister Koo Hyuk-chae of the Ministry of Science and ICT at the youth startup roundtable at the Seoul Hongneung Innopolis © 장형임 기자 |
This visit was made as the 23rd stop of ‘Project Gonggam 118’, an initiative to realize field-centered science and technology policy. ‘Project Gonggam 118’ carries the meaning of communicating and empathizing with a diversity of scientists and engineers as wide as the 118 elements that make up the world. Vice Minister Koo arranged the schedule to personally tour the Innopolis, a startup hub grounded in regional industry-academia-research cooperation, and to hear firsthand the vivid experiences of young people at the frontline of entrepreneurship.
Vice Minister Koo first visited Osite, a youth startup company based at the Seoul Bio Hub, and then sat down with young entrepreneurs who had graduated from the ‘GRaND-K Startup School’, a startup support program of the Seoul Hongneung Innopolis, to discuss the Ministry’s measures for developing youth startup support.
The ‘GRaND-K Startup School’ is a competition-based startup support program that the Seoul Hongneung Innopolis has run since 2021. In particular, starting this year, it has selected young entrepreneurs for 70 percent of its support recipients in order to expand support for youth technology startups, running the program with a focus on young people. Selected startup teams receive common training in areas such as management and taxation, along with company-specific tailored training including corporate diagnostics and mentoring.
As of 2026, the program has supported the founding of 345 teams and connected them with 48 billion won in investment. It continues to serve as a startup hub, producing achievements such as Curebus, which succeeded in a large-scale technology transfer worth 500 billion won.
At the roundtable that day, Vice Minister Koo and the young entrepreneurs exchanged views on the entire startup ecosystem, from early-stage founding to corporate growth, addressing current government support policies and areas in need of improvement. A consensus formed that startup support should not stop at one-off funding but extend to the growth stages of a company.
Vice Minister Koo stated, ‘Only when the voices from the field that we discussed today are reflected in policy can it develop in a direction that truly helps entrepreneurs,’ adding, ‘Through the R&D special zones, the Ministry of Science and ICT will actively support young researchers so that they can realize their dreams of technology startups, and so that the companies they found can leap forward as innovative enterprises, including their subsequent growth.’
For the young entrepreneurs, this roundtable held significance in that it became a channel through which they could directly convey their own experiences to the policymaking process. Attention is focused on how the demands raised in the field will be reflected in enhancing the effectiveness of future youth technology startup support systems.
지역 홍보대사 신청 기자양성과정 신청 코리안투데이 지부장 신청 코리안투데이 인천강화코리안브랜드대상 신청 최고경영인대상 신청 소비자만족도대상 신청
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