Busan is good

Busan Metropolitan City Activates Global Technology and Diplomatic Networks On-site at CES 2026

내용

Busan Metropolitan City Mayor Park Heong-joon announced that, during the local schedule at CES 2026, the city has consecutively activated global technology and diplomatic networks and has embarked on a full-scale effort to strengthen competitiveness in future industries and expand the foundation for attracting overseas investment.

On January 7 (local time), Busan Metropolitan City signed a memorandum of understanding between the Busan Economic Promotion Agency and the Hungarian Export Promotion Agency (HEPA) at the Integrated Busan Pavilion, establishing a foundation to support local companies’ entry into the European market and to expand economic and trade cooperation. The mayor also visited Samsung Electronics’ standalone exhibition at Wynn to review the future technology strategies of a global leading company.

On January 8 (local time), the mayor toured the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), the main exhibition venue of CES 2026, and visited exhibition halls of LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor Group, among others, to examine key trends in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and digital health.

Through this visit, Busan Metropolitan City comprehensively reviewed the potential for linkage with the city’s current core strategies to foster advanced strategic industries based on robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

The city is currently pursuing core strategies including fostering robotics-AI convergence industries; advancing smart manufacturing and logistics; conducting demonstrations of future mobility and autonomous driving technologies; and building digital healthcare and smart cities. In particular, it is nurturing robotics and physical AI technologies—capable of being tested and demonstrated in industrial sites and urban spaces—as a key driving force for upgrading the regional industrial structure and creating new industries.

Building on this visit, Busan Metropolitan City plans to actively incorporate global leading companies’ robotics and AI technology trends into its policies to accelerate automation and intelligentization of the regional manufacturing sector, and to expand robot demonstration projects designed to address urban challenges. In addition, the city will further strengthen strategic and policy linkages to concretize the development of a Busan-style robotics industrial ecosystem and to connect these efforts to joint research and technology cooperation with domestic and international companies and research institutes, as well as to investment attraction.

In addition, Busan Metropolitan City held a meeting with a Vice President of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the organizer of CES, and discussed measures to further strengthen cooperative relations between Busan and CES.

During the meeting, the two sides exchanged in-depth views on expanding the continuous participation of Busan-based companies and on ways to connect with global technology investment networks. They also discussed an international cooperation model for Busan to leap forward as a leading innovation hub city in Asia, as well as collaborative measures to promote the global market entry of local startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to facilitate overseas investment linkages.

Both sides identified robotics and physical AI as major technology trends at CES and agreed on the potential for linkage with Busan Metropolitan City’s robotics- and AI-based advanced strategic industries currently being promoted. They also expressed their willingness to expand cooperation going forward, including a future visit to Busan.

Later that afternoon, Busan Metropolitan City visited Allegiant Stadium, the home stadium of the Las Vegas Raiders of the U.S. National Football League (NFL), and held a meeting with the team’s president. The visit was arranged to directly review world-class operational cases of a large-scale sports and entertainment complex and to assess the impact of major sports-based facilities on urban competitiveness and the revitalization of the local economy.

Opened in 2020, Allegiant Stadium is a multifunctional facility capable of hosting not only NFL games but also large-scale concerts, international sports events, exhibitions, and conventions. It is regarded as a representative successful model of sports-and-culture convergence that creates tourism and consumption through year-round utilization.

During the meeting, the parties exchanged broad views on overall team operations, including the Raiders’ management strategy, approaches to the development and operation of stadium-based facilities, and strategies to expand the culture and tourism industry using sports content.

Busan Metropolitan City plans to use this visit as an opportunity to expand exchanges with global sports teams and related institutions, and to further develop strategies for urban regeneration, tourism promotion, and private investment attraction by leveraging large-scale sports facilities.

Mayor Park Heong-joon stated, “CES 2026 is a venue that goes beyond a technology exhibition and allows us to gauge the future of global industries and cities. Based on this visit, we will actively incorporate the advanced technologies and global sports and entertainment infrastructure operation cases into Busan’s strategic industry development and urban innovation policies.”

He added, “We will further accelerate international cooperation and private investment attraction so that Busan can leap forward as a globally competitive city where technology, culture, sports, and tourism converge.”