Pohang City Proves Itself as a 'Battery Leading City' by Winning Korea's Representative Brand Award

Published 19 Apr.2022 12:46(KST)

Updated 10 Aug.2025 11:36(KST)

Selected as an Excellent Special Zone for Two Consecutive Years Since Designation as a Regulatory Free Zone, Transforming into a Battery City

Pohang City Hall.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongguk Lee] On the 19th, Pohang City was honored with the grand prize in the Battery Industry City category at the Korea Representative Brand Awards ceremony held at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul, marking its ‘first-ever win’.

The ‘Korea Representative Brand’ event, hosted by DongA.com, Hankyung.com, and IMBC, has annually selected specialized companies, local governments, and public institutions by category since 2006. This year, in line with the future new industrial structural changes, the Battery Industry City category was selected for the first time.

In January this year, through preliminary surveys and expert group investigations, a total of four local governments (Pohang, Gumi, Wanju, Ulsan) were nominated as candidates in the Battery Industry City category. The Representative Brand Grand Prize Selection Committee conducted an online consumer survey over 15 days (2/4~2/18) using a proportional sampling method by gender, age, and region, covering four areas including initial awareness and auxiliary awareness. As a result, Pohang City was awarded the Korea Representative Brand Grand Prize in the Battery Industry City category.

Since being designated in 2019 as the nation’s first ‘Next-Generation Battery Recycling Regulatory Free Zone,’ Pohang City was selected as an excellent free zone for two consecutive years in 2020 and 2021, contributing to local employment creation and attracting related companies. Based on this, Pohang City is actively fostering the battery industry as a regional key project, striving to transform its image from a steel industry city to a battery city.

In particular, large corporations such as EcoPro, GS Construction, and POSCO Chemical are located in the Blue Valley National Industrial Complex and Yeongilman Industrial Complex, along with related small and medium-sized enterprises in the upstream and downstream sectors of the industry. Centered on these, a cooperative ecosystem for battery companies is being established.

In October last year, the Secondary Battery Comprehensive Management Center was established, serving as a hub collection center capable of storing about 1,000 used batteries, the largest scale in Korea. Additionally, it is expanding its role as a hub supporting private sector technology research and development, including performance evaluation, grading, and safety assessment of used batteries.

Acting Mayor Jang-sik Lee expressed his determination, stating, “We will make Pohang City the central city of Korea’s new battery recycling industry by promoting national projects related to batteries, including the resource circulation cluster and inline automatic evaluation center.”