Gwangju Metropolitan City Mayor Kang Ki-jeong said in his first New Year’s address after taking office on the 1st, “I will make Gwangju a center of future industries.”
On the 2nd, Gwangju City Mayor Kang and the Gwangju delegation will visit Las Vegas and Silicon Valley, USA, where the world’s largest home appliance and IT exhibition, ‘CES (International Electronics Show) 4’, will be held for 12 nights and 6 days from the 9th to the 2023th. He announced that he plans to visit one after another.
Mayor Kang’s main topic in this New Year’s address is ‘creating an environment for entrepreneurship and supporting businesses.’ In particular, the word ‘start-up’ was mentioned a whopping 18 times. Mayor Kang emphasized, “We will support the success of innovative startups by combining the three pillars of infrastructure construction, financial support, and transfer of know-how for the success of large corporations, and even failures will be accumulated as assets of Gwangju, a city of opportunity.”
The New Year’s address of the head of a local government is important in that it presents the direction of work for the new year. Although the New Year’s address is usually announced every year, Mayor Kang’s New Year’s address was full of concerns, will, and desperation. In addition, specific strategies were put forward to make Gwangju a high-tech industry-based start-up city. A strong message was sent to transform ‘Gwangju, where young people leave’ into ‘Gwangju, where talented people come.’
As his first step toward this end, Mayor Kang chose to participate in ‘CES1’ held in Las Vegas, USA from January 5th to 8th. Kim Gwang-jin, Deputy Mayor for Culture and Economy, Lim Cha-sik, head of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Convergence Business Division, and Kwak Jae-do, head of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Convergence Business Division, also decided to accompany the group. In line with Gwangju City’s policy of promoting high-tech industries, members of the Gwangju City Council are also boarding a plane to the United States.
At this CES, the ‘Gwangju Joint Brand Promotion Center’ will be operated with eight local companies. Home appliances and IT products implemented with artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent smart home technology will be introduced. Through this, we plan to lay the foundation for Gwangju’s joint brand ‘GIEL’ to enter the overseas market.
This trip to CES is a very unusual event for Gwangju City. This is because until now, CES has not had much of a relationship with Gwangju City. Gwangju Mayor Kang Ki-jeong said, “To create Gwangju as an opportunity city with a high startup success rate, expanding sales channels for products made by local companies is more important than anything else. Operating a promotional center will help local small and medium-sized businesses increase their brand image and expand their sales channels.” “It has been stated.
The U.S. sideways trend that began at the beginning of the new year does not stop at CES participation. Gwangju City plans to benchmark advanced investment environments and expand its overseas investment attraction network by visiting innovative companies and prestigious universities in Silicon Valley. In addition, we plan to visit global tech companies and universities such as Google, Apple, Tesla, and UC Berkeley to learn about management innovation and talent development.
Gwangju Mayor Kang Ki-jeong said, “CES 2023 is the world’s largest international electronics exhibition in which Gwangju City is participating for the first time, and is an opportunity to fully demonstrate Gwangju’s accumulated technological capabilities such as artificial intelligence (AI), future cars, and medical cities.” “We will do our best to develop policies in line with the global trend of industry and create a future industrial ecosystem to secure growth engines for tomorrow’s bright opportunity cities,” he said.
Meanwhile, ‘CES’, the world’s largest IT exhibition, is an exhibition where you can understand the trends of the global home appliance industry at a glance. Hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), it is held every January in Las Vegas, USA. AVING News, which has covered CES for 1 consecutive years, has reported CES news around the world every year since 17, and has been selected as the ‘BEST OF CES’, which selects the best innovative products and technologies, and the ‘BEST OF’, which selects domestic innovative companies. ‘MADE IN KOREA’ was held. In addition, CES on-site issues were vividly conveyed through ‘AVING LIVE’.