Belfast Lord Mayor, Councillor Ryan Murphy, welcomed South Korean Ambassador Yoon to Belfast City Hall on his first visit to the Belfast city region today, Thursday March 7.
His visit was timely, given Belfast’s ‘Innovation Twins’ collaboration with the city of Sejong. Belfast is one of four cities to be matched with South Korean counterparts as part of a new programme funded by UK Government which aims to grow the level of trade and collaboration between both countries.
A delegation of civic, academic, and business representatives will travel to Sejong next month to progress collaboration and formally commit to a ‘Roadmap’ to support bi-lateral trade and research and innovation.
Belfast Lord Mayor, Councillor Ryan Murphy said: “Our relationship with Sejong is built on a shared ambition to harness innovation to rapidly grow our economies for the benefit of all. Both places have deep research strengths within our respective universities, and both have thriving clusters of high-tech SMEs and highly educated workforces.
“We’ve already established Memoranda of Understanding between Belfast and Sejong City Councils; Invest NI and Sejong Technopark; and Queen’s University and the Korea University in Sejong.
“The innovation twins roadmap will take this a stage further with the focus now on specific projects in areas such as cyber-security, green tech, transport, and ‘soft-landing’ opportunities for Belfast companies that want to build trade relationships in South Korea.”
The Belfast Region City Deal is investing over £320 million in innovation and digital initiatives over the next decade to establish major centres of research excellence; support for SME growth clusters; and state-of-art enabling infrastructure.
For more information, go to www.belfastcity.gov.uk/smartbelfast and Innovation City Belfast – Smart Belfast