The Seoul Metropolitan Government held the global startup festival 'Try Everything 2022' at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) from September 21st (Wednesday) to the 23rd (Friday).

That day at the venue, a place was set up where you could find out about the current status of the local entrepreneurship ecosystem.

The government and local governments have been providing a lot of support recently in order to foster local creators and local brands as an alternative to regional polarization and regional extinction. This is because connecting the local area with the local entrepreneurship ecosystem came up as a solution to revive the provinces.

Many officials from Krypton, a first-generation accelerator that concentrates investments on local materials and social enterprises such as Jeju’s “Dazayo”, Busan’s “Samjinium”, Sokcho’s “Chilsung Shipyard”, etc., participated in the event to talk about the ‘local’ business characteristics.

First of all, ‘Dazayo’ runs a business where itlong-term leases and remodels neglected houses in the region for free, makes it like a luxurious hotel, and then provides it as an accommodation. After a set period of time, they then return the house to the owner.

Samjinieum is a non-profit organization that is well-known for its Samjin Fish Cake brand. Samjin Fish Cake has been in business for 69 years and is currently run by the third generation. In particular, Samjin Fish Cake started its business based in the local area and then founded an organization to share the benefits with the local area after achieving good results. Samjin Fish Cake continued to do many activities till this day.

Yong-Jun Park, CEO of Samjinieum said, “Although the atmosphere may seem stagnant in the local areas, we are working hard to find ways that can be returned to the society and the local region.”

Chilsung Shipyard located in Sokcho is usually known as a café, but it is also famous for being a place where one can experience both exhibitions and performances as well.

Yun-Seong Choi, CEO of Chilsung Shipyard, used to work at the Shipyard, but in 2013 came back to his hometown to make ships for outsourcing. However, it wasn’t easy to maintain the shipyard. He further expanded his business to leisure ship businesses but did not achieve results.

CEO Choi said, “After much consideration during the difficult times, I thought that the Shipyard could rise as a new landmark if remodeled into a space thatthe general public can also visit. Thankfully, we received good reviews from the local area, and was able to achieve the current results.”

Krypton is the mainstay of the accelerator, and this year marks its 22^nd year. Since 2018, it has been an advocate for invigorating the local entrepreneurship ecosystem and has been discovering and fostering excellent startups in the local areas.

Kyeong-Jun Yang, CEO of Krypton said, “8 out of our 14 listed companies are noncapital region companies. We started to search for companies all over the country, keeping in mind that there may be companies with potential anywhere in Korea.”

Most of the companies that are listed locally are partners to large corporations, and they suffer damage when those corporations relocate overseas and close their factories.

While CEO Yang was pondering over this matter, Jeju Center for Creative Economy & Innovation asked for help, and taking that as an opportunity he is currently running three businesses in Jeju, Gangwon, Busan, Ulsan, and the Gyeong-nam Provinces

Meanwhile, the city of Seoul has been selected as a Global TOP 10 city to start a business. Various players of the startup ecosystem, such as global corporations, investment institutions, unicorn companies, and the media will attend to accelerate the invigoration of the Seoul startup ecosystem. Accordingly, over 40 programs, such as competitions, lectures, and seminars, will be held at Try Everything 2022, and various global institutions and Korean and foreign startup ecosystem experts, such as South Summit, Extreme Tech Challenge, Startup Genome, and the U.S. EMBASSY & CONSULATE, will be in attendance.

This year’s 2022 TRY EVERYTHING special articles were jointly planned and conducted by AVING NEWS and the Seoul Business Agency (sba), which contributes to the revitalization of the Seoul economy through comprehensive and systematic nurturing of medium and small-sized enterprises in Seoul.