DAEGU < invest Korea

According to Yonhap News,

(SEOUL=Yonhap News) South Korea and France will promote cooperation in the high-tech sector, capitalizing on President Park Geun-hye's visit to Paris this week, a ministry said Friday.

The two sides inked a set of related agreements, as they are pushing for similar national development projects, according to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

The Park administration is campaigning for a "creative economy" intended to foster innovative startups and create jobs.

The French government has also launched "La French Tech" drive to promote local startups.

The ministry said it inked a "letter of intent" with the French Ministry of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs on boosting partnerships in the field.

"The two sides agreed on the importance of creativity and innovation in the development and prosperity of the national economy and decided to share policy and strategy related to the creative economy," the ministry said.

A South Korean regional startup incubation center in Daegu also inked a memorandum of understanding with Digital Grenoble, a French agency that supports startups in the Grenoble area.

The center plans to focus their partnerships on five fields: health care, energy, e-commerce, the Internet of Things and digitalization.

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) also agreed with Ecole Polytechnique, a French public institution of higher education and research, to seek joint projects, including student exchanges.

South Korean officials said Park's visit to Paris, following French President Francois Hollande's trip to Seoul half a year ago, has helped strengthen bilateral ties in the technology and ICT fields.

"France is emerging as a core startup nation in the EU," South Korea's ICT Minister Choi Yang-hee said, adding the two countries will step up cooperation in various sectors from basic science to artificial intelligence.

lcd@yna.co.kr

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