Exceptional visit of Monaco in Korea: a rich program of high-level institutional meetings.

Monaco has been implementing an ambitious and voluntarist digital transition policy, which has been the main focus of the delegation’s visit. On December 4^th, the issues of the 4^th Industrial Revolution were covered during a meeting between Frédéric Genta, Delegate for Digital Affairs and Member of the Government of Monaco, and Young-Jin Choi, Secretary General of the Korean Presidential Committee on the 4th IR. This committee aims at gathering several ministry officials and private company stakeholders to analyze and formulate policy recommendations on the direction of the 4^th IR directly to the Blue House.

On Dec 5^th, Mr Genta met with MOLIT (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport) Vice-Minister Choong Hwan Ahn to share thoughts on smart city policies

On the theme of E-health and the future of healthcare, Mr Genta also met with Deputy Se-Yeon Kim, head of the National Assembly Committee on Healthcare. For the Deputy, innovation in the health sector has become one of the key growth engines in Korea.

Beside the innovation landscape of both countries, the investment ecosystems were another important topic the mission. On December 4th, Monaco delegation (composed of Mr Genta, Guillaume Rose, Chief Executive Officer - Monaco Economic Board (MEB) and Diego Bonaventura, Director of Monaco Chamber of Commerce – accompanied by Cédric Legrand, General Director of FKCCI, met with the head of Invest Korea, Shawn Chang, the investment branch of KOTRA. In 2018, Korea attracted 26.9 bn USD of FDI, a 17,2% increase from a year before, and continues to make efforts to facilitates conditions for foreign investments. Invest Korea and its counterpart Monaco Economic Board could exchange on future opportunities on further investments between the two countries. For Mr. Genta, as the Principality does not have the size to foster its own international tech champions, it should be considered as a showroom and funding nation for displaying cutting edge technologies through partnerships with large corporations. For example, in May 2019, the City-State launched 5G in the framework of a cooperation with Huawei. Monaco also selected Amazon Web Services as a cloud service provider. The cloud will make it possible to implement and accelerate public initiatives such as e-government, mobility, education and healthcare. The Principality is now ready to move a step further and invite Korean partners to test and launch new services.

Finally, the delegation visited local Korean governments to exchange best practices and identify topics of collaboration. On Dec. 5^th, the delegation met Byoung-Yoon You, Vice-Commissionner of Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), who presented IFEZ smart city project, a world reference for integrated services applied in the urban context.

On Dec. 6^th, during meetings with Sohyun Park, President of AURI (Architectural and Urban Research Institute), and Cho Sang-Ho, Deputy Mayor of Sejong City, one of the main Korean national pilot smart city projects, participants could share thoughts on their smart city projects. Since last year, the Principality has launched the policy dubbed “Extended Monaco”, a unique smart city model to combine the best that digital technology can offer and to apply it simultaneously to all of its public policies and its economy, with three priorities in mind: enhancing an already exceptional quality of life, inaugurating a new cycle of economic prosperity and boosting the value of the civil service.