Forty-five South Korean companies exhibited and demonstrated their new technologies related to the “fourth industrial revolution”, from green cars to smart factory solutions, in a bid to create more business opportunities in fast-growing Asean markets.

Officials from the South Korean government, companies and their potential partners and clients gathered at Bexco for the Asean-RoK Innovation Showcase 2019, which was held on the sidelines of the 2019 Asean-RoK Commemorative Summit, in Busan.

“This event is designed to show the current status of prosperity between South Korea and Asean countries by demonstrating promising collaboration cases in new technology sectors, and to suggest a vision for future cooperation,” Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Sung Yoon-mo told a press briefing.

The exhibition was divided into four innovative industries – smart farming, future environment and energy, future mobility and smart lives.

Telstar-Hommel demonstrated its artificial-intelligence smart-factory platform LINK5, designed to create a seamless process throughout the entire manufacturing cycle with the help of 5G, the internet of things, big data and virtual reality.

“Korean small and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] that enter foreign markets by building their factories overseas could harness this technology. This digital technology will allow the headquarters to simultaneously interlock its manufacturing system to its overseas plants real-time,” the firm’s president Park Jung-soo said.

Thai Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Suvit Maesincee, who visited the exhibition with Minister of SMEs and Startups Park Young-sun, showed interest in the Telstar-Hommel, asking whether the company has made inroads into the Thai market.

Suvit inquired about the cost of adopting smart factories and how to solve unemployment issues if the number of smart factories increases.

Park said: “We can train workers to inspect whether smart plants operate well. In that sense, the new technology will increase employment and productivity.”

THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK