Daejeon City announced on the 27th that it has been selected as the implementing agency for the Jeolla–Chungcheong region in the Defense Acquisition Program Administration’s public contest project, the “2026 K-Defense Startup Phase 1 Fostering Project.”

Centered on Daejeon Technopark, the city has formed a consortium with Jeonbuk Technopark, the Innopolis Venture Association, the Daejeon Defense Industry Cooperative, and the KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Eulji Research Institute, and will promote the project by investing a total of KRW 1.5 billion in national funds by December this year.

The K-Defense Startup Fostering Project is designed to discover early-stage startups and promising small and medium-sized enterprises with no prior defense sector experience, and to support them in task planning, defense industry training, preliminary research and development, and mentoring, thereby facilitating their entry into the defense industry. Through this project, the city plans to discover and foster 15 promising defense startups in the Jeolla–Chungcheong region and support them from planning technology development items to prototype production and verification. Participating companies, after undergoing Phase 1 performance evaluations, may also compete for mid- to long-term research and development (R&D) support in Phase 2 (2027, up to KRW 500 million per company) and Phase 3 (2028, up to KRW 2.1 billion per company).

The city plans to establish a wide-area cooperative system linking the local research and development base with the industrial base of Jeonbuk, and to operate the program systematically from company discovery through to growth support. It also intends to promote the conversion of regionally specialized technologies such as robots, drones, and materials to defense applications.

Daejeon Technopark and the Agency for Defense Development Innovation (Defense Technology Promotion Research Institute) will refine the project implementation plan in early May, conclude an agreement, and then begin full-scale support for companies. Yoo Se-jong, Director General of the Future Strategic Industries Office of the city, said, “Based on wide-area cooperation, the city will strengthen support from the defense market entry of startups through to their growth, thereby creating an ecosystem for new high-tech defense industries.”

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