Busan is emerging as a bridgehead for the silver industry.

Busan Metropolitan City announced on the 27th that it was recently selected for the Ministry of Science and ICT’s public offering project to establish a “marine culture city-based Age-Tech demonstration hub.”

The project aims to create a demonstration environment in which older adults can experience advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in their daily lives by combining Busan’s various marine and tourism infrastructure facilities.

Through this, the city seeks to foster an AI-based silver economy industry to respond to a super-aged society (where 20% or more of the population is aged 65 or older) and to build an industrial demonstration hub ecosystem centered on Busan. A total of KRW 27 billion will be invested by 2030. Busan, which became the first metropolitan city in the country to enter a super-aged society, had a 65-and-over population ratio of 25.3% as of the end of last year.

A city official said, “We will build an Age-Tech industrial ecosystem based on an open cooperation structure in which local companies, public institutions, and demand-side players participate together.” Age-Tech refers to products or services that use advanced technologies such as AI, big data, and biotechnology to improve the quality of life for older adults.

To this end, the city has established four core strategies and eight key initiatives under the name “Busan-type AGES,” with the vision of “advancing as a global leading city in the silver economy based on AI Transformation (AX).”

“Busan-type AGES” consists of: △ A (AX Expansion), expanding AI services beyond care and healthcare into all aspects of daily life such as culture, leisure, and finance; △ G (Ground Testbed), supporting citizen-participatory, community-based demonstrations grounded in five anchor labs and living labs; △ E (Enterprise Scale-up), providing full life-cycle, tailored support from demonstration to commercialization for Age-Tech companies; and △ S (Spread Global), entering and expanding into global markets by utilizing cooperative networks with super-aged advanced countries such as Japan, the United States, and Europe.

In addition, through the eight key initiatives, the city will promote demonstration, commercialization, and industrial infrastructure development in stages. It will identify and support more than 130 AI Age-Tech projects from early-stage technologies to full commercialization, and will expand demonstration domains to cruises, senior towns, and more by linking them with marine tourism, a regionally specialized industry. The city will also promote the spread of the “K-Age-Tech” brand by supporting overseas demonstrations and global market entry strategies for 45 promising companies.

A city official said, “We plan to establish a virtuous cycle in which data accumulated during the demonstration process are shared and utilized to enhance the competitiveness of corporate products, leading to entry into domestic and overseas markets and to job creation.”

In parallel, the city will designate and operate “five anchor labs” using infrastructure across Busan and will build a silver industry cluster in connection with the HAHA Campus, the nation’s first senior complex.

Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon said, “Through this project, we will establish a virtuous cycle in which technologies validated in Busan become global standards and spread to markets worldwide, and we will elevate Busan into a global Age-Tech hub city.”

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