KT under CEO Koo Hyun-mo's 'Post-Telecom' Vision, Collaborates with Daejeon City on 'Digital and Biohealth'

KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo (left) and Daejeon Mayor Heo Tae-jeong (right) are posing for a commemorative photo after signing the MOU.

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Cho] KT, under the leadership of Koo Hyun-mo, who is accelerating its move away from traditional telecommunications, has partnered with Daejeon Metropolitan City in the new business fields of 'Digital and Biohealth.' KT is participating as a consortium member in the bio startup support institution 'K-Bio Lab Hub Construction' and will also jointly establish a dedicated biohealth fund.

On the morning of the 21st, KT announced that CEO Koo and Heo Tae-jeong, Mayor of Daejeon Metropolitan City, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for this joint cooperation project at Daejeon City Hall.

Through this MOU, KT and Daejeon Metropolitan City agreed to collaborate in various areas including ▲participation in the construction of the K-Bio Lab Hub ▲creation of a dedicated biohealth fund ▲joint discovery of digital healthcare services ▲support for startup park operations and activation of the startup ecosystem ▲operation of a non-face-to-face learning mentoring program (KT Lansun Yagak) ▲and establishment of Daejeon's digital transformation strategy.

Specifically, KT will participate as a consortium member in the K-Bio Lab Hub construction project, which Daejeon City is actively attracting, providing support to companies based on the latest technologies. Additionally, KT will jointly establish a dedicated biohealth fund to support biohealth startups and scale-ups located in Daejeon.

Regarding digital healthcare, KT plans to promote collaborative projects among industry, academia, research institutes, hospitals, and government offices based on KT’s 5G infrastructure. There will also be a project to specialize the startup street stretching from KAIST to Chungnam National University into a core space for startups.

CEO Koo emphasized, "By leveraging KT’s digital platform capabilities such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud, we can play an innovative partner role in the focused development of the digital and biohealth industries that Daejeon City aims for." Digital and biohealth are new business areas that KT, having declared its transformation into a Digico (digital platform company), is particularly focusing on. After establishing a dedicated organization directly under CEO Koo last year, KT has recently been achieving visible results by continuously collaborating with global pharmaceutical companies and others.

KT and Daejeon Metropolitan City will form working-level councils for each cooperation project area and establish detailed implementation plans. Mayor Heo said, “In an era where all fields such as industry, education, and culture are transitioning to digital, this joint cooperation project agreement with KT, a leading company in the digital field, will be a new turning point for the development of Daejeon.”

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