Post-Corona Era, Promising Bio and Healthcare Industry

Education, Office Work, Artificial Intelligence, Smart Farm, and More Continue

Federation of Korean Industries

[Asia Economy Reporter Dongwoo Lee] The bio and healthcare sectors are expected to be the most promising industries in the post-COVID-19 era. It is argued that the COVID-19 crisis should be taken as an opportunity to improve the structure of our industries.

According to a survey conducted by the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) on 36 heads of research centers at securities firms and venture capitalists regarding promising industries in the post-COVID-19 era, the bio and healthcare (including telemedicine) sector received the highest response rate at 31.9%, the FKI announced on the 28th.

Following that were ▲education and office sectors centered on remote education and non-face-to-face offices (19.4%) ▲artificial intelligence (8.3%) ▲smart farms (6.9%). The most important factors considered when selecting promising new industries were industry growth potential (33.3%) and the impact of industrial structure reorganization (29.2%).

The FKI stated, "As COVID-19 has prolonged, interest in health management and immunity has increased, and experiencing online school openings and working from home in daily life sectors such as education and office work seems to have influenced the survey results by directly feeling the technological capabilities and potential."

Assuming the level of technology-leading countries such as the United States as 100, the competitiveness of Korea’s new industry sectors was compared as follows: ▲transport and mobility (autonomous vehicles, ride-sharing) 59 ▲drones and robots (unmanned mobility and service devices) 61 ▲smart farms and artificial intelligence each at 63. On the other hand, ▲network (next-generation communication networks) scored 88, and ▲education, office, and fintech (non-face-to-face finance) each scored 81, showing relatively higher levels. However, a gap still remains compared to leading countries.

The problems identified in Korea’s new industry sectors, which are evaluated as insufficient compared to leading countries, include ▲lack of basic and foundational technologies (34.7%) and ▲conflicts with government regulations (19.5%).

Regarding policy support for the development of Korea’s new industries in the future, improvement of related industrial regulations (31.9%) was found to be the most urgent. This was followed by ▲support for basic technology research and development (23.6%) ▲training of specialized personnel and expansion of industry-academia-research cooperation (12.5%) ▲support for collaboration between companies (11.1%) and mediation of conflicts among existing industries and stakeholders (11.1%) ▲expansion of financial and tax support related to new industries (7.0%) ▲and expansion of demonstration and pilot projects (2.8%).

The FKI proposed promising industries to focus on in the post-COVID-19 era under the acronym ‘T.E.C.H.N.O.L.O.G.Y.’ Specifically, these are ▲Transport & Mobility ▲Edu-tech ▲Cloud ▲Healthcare ▲Network ▲O2O (Online to Offline) ▲Logistics ▲Operational Tech (manufacturing technology) ▲Green Industry ▲YOLO Biz (content).

Yoo Hwan-ik, head of the FKI Corporate Policy Office, said, "Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has naturally permeated industries and daily life," adding, "We must take the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity for structural innovation in our industries through proactive and broad regulatory reforms."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.