As a state-run programming contest gets under way in a modernist glass building close to Seoul, a few dozen 20-somethings roam the venue, clad in black or white T-shirts and hoping their coding skills will win them a share of the Won27m ($24,000) prize money.
The event is hosted by the creative economy centre at Bundang, south of South Korea’s capital. It is one of a network of 17 such institutions being rolled out across the country that offer workspace, funding and advice to start-ups and budding entrepreneurs.
Along with a new ministry of future planning, the centres are the most visible manifestation of the government’s “creative economy” agenda — President Park Geun-hye’s drive to foster start-ups and ease the country’s economic reliance on a small number of large business groups, known as chaebols, such as Samsung and Hyundai.