Democratic Party Daejeon City Party holds ‘2nd Public Institution Relocation and Daejeon Future Debate’
(Daejeon = Yonhap News) Reporter Park Joo-young = As there have been no cases of relocating public institutions even after Daejeon was additionally designated as an innovation city, an argument was raised that fairness should be maintained in the second relocation of public institutions.
Kwak Hyeon-geun, a professor at Daejeon University, said at the 'Second Public Institution Relocation and Daejeon Future Debate' held by the Democratic Party of Korea's Daejeon City Party at the city council on the 31st, "Daejeon, which was excluded from the first public institution relocation process and was later designated as an innovation city, has different starting conditions from other innovation cities." He added, "Competing all innovation cities again on the same line is problematic in terms of policy equity, so policy correction must be made."
Daejeon was additionally designated as an innovation city along with South Chungcheong Province in October 2020, but so far, no public institutions have been relocated in accordance with the innovation city designation, leading to criticism that it is an 'innovative city only in appearance.'
Regarding the strategy for attracting secondary public institutions, Professor Kwak emphasized, “We need to focus on strengthening the function of connecting research results to companies and markets beyond R&D capabilities.”
He suggested, "In order to increase the productivity of Korea's research and development (R&D) and solve the bottleneck of commercialization of research results, related organizations must be integrated in Daejeon. As the Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) and the National Railroad Corporation already exist in Daejeon, an attraction strategy should be formed with railroads and future mobility as the axis."
Yoo Se-jong, head of the task force in response to Daejeon City's secondary public institution relocation, also said, "Daejeon is pursuing a strategy that allows 'science and technology' to lead to a single growth path called 'venture growth' through 'intellectual property' and 'technology startup' as a four-point strategy for secondary public institution relocation. Through this, national research and development (R&D) research management, intellectual property hub, leading K-defense industry, integrated operation of national railway services, water and air green tech innovation, “We will create six clusters, including start-up, venture and technology finance clusters,” he said.
Director Yoo emphasized, “We will make the second public institution relocation not a simple competition between regions for institutions, but a turning point in balanced national development that maximizes the strengths of each region and fosters growth engines for the entire Republic of Korea.”
Kim Min-seok, a research fellow at the Daejeon Research Institute, said in a presentation on the topic, "105 public institutions completed relocation to regional areas in 2019, but problems arose, such as not relocating the head of the institution's address and the operation of shuttle buses to the metropolitan area," and emphasized, "To complement the problems that appeared in the first public institution relocation, a comprehensive support plan such as expanding housing supply and transportation is needed."
According to Research Fellow Kim, Daejeon's total regional production was 56 trillion won as of 2024, ranking only 14th in the country. This is due to the industrial structure centered on the service industry without large corporations.
On the other hand, Daejeon is home to 27 government-funded research institutes, 7 educational institutes including the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and 11 other research institutes, and the scale of venture investment is 391.3 billion won, the largest in a non-metropolitan area, creating an ecosystem centered on deep tech.
Researcher Kim emphasized, "Daejeon's weakness is that it has a low conversion rate from science and technology to startups and scale-ups," and added, "Daejeon needs to be transformed into a global innovation city for science and technology startups by relocating institutions related to technology startups, intellectual property, and venture growth."
Attending the debate on this day were Daejeon Mayor Heo Tae-jeong, National Assembly members Jang Jong-tae, Park Beom-gye, and Jang Cheol-min, and Daejeon City Chairman Jo Seong-chil.
