Korea’s startup festival COMEUP aims to boost global exchanges

[Courtesy of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups]

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups, in collaboration with the Korea Startup Forum, is gearing up to transform South Korea’s largest startup festival, ‘COMEUP,’ into a hub for global exchanges.

On Monday, the ministry and the Korea Startup Forum held a pre-event briefing for COMEUP 2023 at Dreamplus in Seoul’s Seocho District, where they unveiled a “Global Community Zone” to boost COMEUP as an international event.

According to the ministry, this year’s event will welcome representatives from 29 countries, including a 180-member delegation from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as participants from the United States, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Indonesia, and Uganda. Notably, for the first time in COMEUP’s history, around 60 percent of participating startups will hail from overseas companies.

In a bid to expand networking opportunities between Korean and overseas corporate venture capital (CVC) entities, the “Global CVC Conference” will also be held as part of the event, with representatives from around 160 CVC entities from various countries expected to attend.

The 2023 edition of ‘COMEUP,’ now in its fifth year, will run for three days from November 8 to 10 at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul.