President Kim Jung-hwan of Korea Industrial Complex Corp. (KICOX)

President Kim Jung-hwan of Korea Industrial Complex Corp. (KICOX) decided to concentrate the corporation’s capabilities on offering support to companies to help them overcome a crisis this year.

To this end, KICOX is stepping on the gas to implement joint R&D projects and offer support on consortium technology development. The corporation also plans to accelerate efforts to build smart green industrial complexes in the post COVID-19 pandemic era.

In his New Year’s message, delivered on Jan. 10, KICOX President Kim announced these policy tasks and carried out a reorganization. Designating core values for the year 2021: Overcoming, Leap and Trust, he said, KICOX will aggressively give a helping hand to companies which are struggling to overcome a crisis caused by the pandemic.

Seeing companies’ technology competitiveness as an essential factor to overcome current hardships, KICOX decided to spur projects to support joint R&Ds related to the value chain of each industry and each type of business.

President Kim said, “Supporting an upgrade of the industry ecosystem and companies’ efforts to secure new growth engines will lead to evolution of a value-added industry cluster.”

He stressed the need for efforts to solve complaints and grievances facing companies, and overhauling irrational regulations and systems. KICOX will support companies’ joint R&D and consortium-style technology development to help companies secure core capabilities to overcome hardships caused by the pandemic, as well as future growth engines.

KICOX decided to lay a strong foundation to build smart green industrial complexes as a preemptive step to cope with the post COVID-19 era.

The corporation plans to accelerate efforts to help industrial complexes build digital infrastructure essential for high-tech industries, such as innovation data centers and process innovation simulator centers, so that companies can change into key players of the digital economy.

KICOX plans to help industrial complexes build smart energy platforms to support companies’ energy management efficiency and conversion to low-carbon energies, in accordance with global carbon neutrality and global commitment to renewal energy, RE100.

The corporation plans to ramp up programs to nurture new technology manpower in the digital and green sectors and collaboration among industry and academic circles.

KICOX conducted a reorganization to translate innovative strategies into action. The corporation inaugurated the Industrial Complex Promotion Office designed to spearhead the smart green industrial complex project, one of the national agendas and the Korean New Deal projects.

The office consists of three teams — the Industrial Complex Promotion Planning Team, responsible for supporting policies of reforming industrial complexes, the Smart Green Industrial Complex Team, charged with overseeing smart green industrial complex projects, and the Smart Platform Team for sharing and utilizing corporate resources of industrial complexes.

A view of KICOX headquarters in Daegu.(Photos: KICOX)