Seoul City to participate in 2020 Consumer Electronic Show

The Seoul metropolitan government will join the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2020 for the first time. The CES is the largest trade show featuring consumer electronics and the event showcasing information and communications technology and artificial intelligence.

The Seoul metropolitan government plans to open a booth at the CES held in Las Vegas in January while Mayor Park Won-soon will present a blueprint for “Smart City Seoul.” Twenty-four South Korean small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as venture companies, will accompany the mayor to the CES to find new business opportunities by promoting their technologies and meeting foreign investors.

The city announced on Wednesday that its participation in the 2020 CES has been finalized and it will install the 198-square-meter Seoul hall in the CES Eureka Park. The Eureka Park mainly features start-ups and new CES participants. The Korea hall set up by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in 2019 to support South Korean small and medium-sized companies was also located in the Eureka Park. The Seoul metropolitan government already selected candidate companies to join the CES through the Seoul Business Agency and the Seoul Digital Foundation. The final list will be determined before October.

At the 2020 CES, the metropolitan government will showcase the “digital mayor’s office,” which is currently set up in the Seoul mayor’s office. The digital office provides real-time information on traffic, disasters, etc. on a large screen through the connected CCTV cameras in Seoul. In case of fire, it shows up immediately on the screen and updates on extinguishment are also provided. A single screen features 290 systems and 16 million data points combined together. It is a symbolic system of Seoul’s aspiration to become the smartest city in the world.

The Seoul metropolitan government also announced in March a plan to install 50,000 Internet of Things sensors across the city to collect big data, which will be used for various policies, including the transportation environment. Mayor Park himself will promote the smart city vision at the CES next year.


Woo-Shin Han hanwshin@donga.com