Busan City Hosts Global Youth Technology Festival 'Junction Asia 2023'

18-20th BEXCO Hosts Europe's Largest Hackathon 'Junction' Asia Version

Total Prize 15 Million KRW, Winning Team Granted Opportunity to Participate in 'Junction 2023'

Europe's largest tech hackathon 'Junction' is set to open once again in Busan as 'Junction Asia'!

JUNCTUIN ASIA 2023 Poster.

Busan City will host the 'Junction Asia 2023' competition at BEXCO in Busan for three days from the 18th to the 20th.

'Junction Asia' is the Asian version of Europe's largest tech hackathon 'Junction,' a global hackathon festival where young people from around the world showcase their technical skills.

'Junction' started as a hackathon organized by the startup club of Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, which launched SLUSH, the world's largest startup ecosystem event, and has now grown into Europe's largest hackathon.

A hackathon is a portmanteau of hacking and marathon, referring to an event where analysts, developers, designers, and others interested in a specific problem gather to create innovative new technologies such as web services or business models within a limited time.

Junction Asia has been held in the form of 'JunctionX City' and, starting last year, was held in Busan using the name 'Junction Continent (Asia),' on par with the Junction competition held in Finland, marking its second edition this year.

The team 'Gojingamrae,' which won 'Junction Asia 2022,' also participated in 'Junction 2022' held in Finland last November and achieved the grand prize at the global competition.

Last year's JUNCTION ASIA 2022 IN BUSAN event.

The 'Gojingamrae' team developed the 'Haru' app, which uses artificial intelligence to draw a picture based on diary entries written by young people, and won the grand prize at 'Junction 2022.'

This year's 'Junction Asia 2023' will be conducted with participants in developer, designer, and planner roles collaborating for 48 hours to produce results addressing technical challenges presented by global companies.

The main schedule includes ▲topic-specific workshops on hackathon challenges ▲team building through networking among participants ▲hackathon for idea discovery and technology development ▲rapid mentoring from presenting organizations and startup mentoring ▲prototype exhibition and presentation, and award ceremony.

'Junction Asia 2023' will feature 300 young participants who passed the preliminary screening out of over 1,000 applicants from 27 countries.

Specifically, 975 people applied from 27 countries, including 89 foreigners from 26 countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Vietnam, and Kazakhstan.

Notably, among all applicants, 149 were high school students and 413 were university students, showing the enthusiastic participation of young people.

This year's 'Junction Asia 2023' offers total prize money worth 15 million KRW, and the winning team will earn the right to participate in 'Junction 2023' in Finland. Additionally, outstanding teams will have opportunities for commercialization or startups linked with the Busan Big Data Innovation Center's operational programs.

Global companies and various organizations are also participating as partners, co-presenting challenges to further heat up the competition.

Presenters include ▲Busan Tourism Organization, which is creating a sustainable tourism foundation utilizing the entire city of Busan, and Ground K, which operates a tourism transportation platform, jointly participating ▲global electronic shelf label (ESL) specialist SoluM ▲Jakaro Robotics, a global collaborative robot company supported by SoftBank ▲and CNT Tech, which operates food tech platforms such as Kakao Order.

In particular, Busan City will also jointly participate in presentations with Shinhan Card, which is promoting data-based regional small business revitalization and data science convergence talent development cooperation projects.

Supporting institutions and organizations include ▲Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) ▲Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) Startup Promotion Center ▲Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) Link Project Group ▲Group by HR ▲CNT Tech ▲D.CAMP and 12 other organizations and companies.

'Junction Asia 2023' can be viewed online by anyone through the Junction Asia website.

Mayor Park Hyung-jun said, "This competition will serve as an opportunity to amplify Busan's global innovation capabilities by combining Junction's philosophy of dreaming of a better life through youth-led technological innovation with our city's efforts to innovate science, technology, and research and development through cooperation among local governments, industries, and universities. Our city will actively support Junction Asia and do its best to help excellent teams find employment in desired companies and enable entrepreneurs with innovative technologies to grow in Busan."

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