The Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) aims to attract an additional 120 global corporate players and build the world’s largest bio/health complex. A convergence and multi-disciplinary hub to lead the 4th Industrial Revolution will be built, and a 5 billion won global manpower development scholarship will be inaugurated as part of efforts to nurture gifted manpower in the Incheon area into global leaders.
These are contained in the IFEZ’s vision, five strategies and 20 action tasks on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the opening of the IFEZ, which were announced by the Incheon Metropolitan City government in a session on Feb. 6.
Under the vision “Global Business Frontier,” the IFEZ set five goals being a business center of Northeast Asia; a hub of leading the 4th Industrial Revolution; a global educational city; a culture/leisure hub; and a smart city. The IFEZ also implements 20 tasks tailored to attract global corporate leaders and create the world’s top business environment.
The goals and tasks unveiled are arranged through consultations from experts from the IFEZ development advisory committee based on the outcomes of 15 years of development. They are to be officially finalized and declared on Oct. 15 in celebration of the 15th anniversary of opening of the IFEZ.
Incheon Metropolitan City said advanced countries have already implemented major metropolitan economic sphere development projects to ramp up urban competitiveness, and now is the time when the concept of being a business center for Northeast Asia with a focus on Incheon needs to be reestablished, and a core driving force should be the IFEZ.
The IFEZ aims to attract an additional 120 global corporate leaders on top of the current 60 companies already there to create good quality jobs and induce investments from their cooperative partners. It will push ahead with projects to create the Hana Financial Town in Cheongna District and the Green Financing Valley through creating of a green environment financing city in Songdo.
Incheon plans to upgrade the Seobu Industrial Complex into an advanced industry complex and develop the Seoul metropolitan landfill area into a global theme park/resort, while creating a medical tourism/leisure/industrial complex at an area connecting southern part of Ganghwa Island and Incheon International Airport.
The city is seeking to push for the designation of the areas as IFEZ. The municipal government aims to raise the number of international organizations IFEZ attracted from 15 to 50. To this end, it plans to create optimal locations for attracting international organizations with health care catering to foreigners and opening legal and tax counters specializing in consultations for foreigners.
The world’s best bio/health care complex will be created by connecting the 4th, 5th and 7th development zones of Songdo and the 11th development zone to aggressively cope with the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Futuristic medical complex towns will make their debut by attracting a medical town in Songdo, a quasi general hospital in Yeongjong, and a medical tourism complex in Cheongna. Songdo International City will focus on attracting companies specializing in core technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution, including IT, BT, medical convergence, AI, 5G, IoT, self-driving, and core materials and parts. Airline maintenance, repair and overhaul and general airline industry complexes will be built to attract airline maintenance, aviation training, and aviation parts institutions and companies.
The Cheongna International City will have robot, drone and new energy industry clusters, while the Incheon High Tech Park will attract futuristic car parts makers to build convergence and multi-disciplinary hubs to lead the 4th Industrial Complex.
