Change-up Ground, home to some 90 companies in advanced materials, bio and artificial intelligence (AI), is a startup platform linking universities, corporations and startups. POSCO
“We call this the ‘Salmon Project.’ A growing number of entrepreneurs from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) are building their companies in the Seoul metropolitan area and then coming back to Pohang. Quite a few of them have reached corporate valuations in the hundreds of billions of won.”
That was how Kim Sung-keun, president of POSTECH, described so-called “salmon companies” such as Graphene Square, AnPoly and Neuromeka, when met at POSCO Cheongsongdae in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, on Wednesday.
Pohang is the only provincial city in Korea that hosts both one of the country’s top five conglomerates and one of its top five universities. The city has built out an end-to-end ecosystem covering daycare, education, jobs, talent development and startups. That is why officials from the National Spatial Transformation Policy Task Force under the Office for Government Policy Coordination, along with representatives of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, visited Pohang on the day. The visit was the first stop of the “National Transformation Field Lab,” an initiative to review successful regional growth models ahead of the full-scale rollout of national transformation policies in the second half of this year.
At Asia’s largest workplace daycare, built by POSCO with a 10 billion won investment, visitors said the facility was “good enough to make you want to have another child.” The center features spacious indoor areas divided by age from 1 to 7 years old, as well as outdoor play spaces. Children here can also receive high-quality education without leaving the region — at Pohang Jecheol High School, an autonomous private high school, and at POSTECH, a world-class engineering university.
Many graduates go on to work at POSCO or take a shot at entrepreneurship at Change-up Ground, a startup incubator built by POSCO with an investment of about 83 billion won. Opened on the POSTECH campus in 2022, Change-up Ground is the largest of its kind in southeastern Korea, with a total floor area of 28,000 square meters. It currently houses some 90 startups with a combined corporate valuation of 1.5 trillion won. Hong Dae-woong, head of the investment division at POSTECH Holdings, said in an interview at the site that “more than 30 of them are valued at over 10 billion won each.”
Graphene Square, a flagship “salmon company,” is among them. The firm relocated its base from Gyeonggi Province to Pohang in 2021 and built the world’s first mass-production plant for graphene film. These returning companies are also bringing their employees and families with them. Noh Sang-cheol, CEO of bio-material firm AnPoly, said at the April groundbreaking of the company’s headquarters and plant in the Pohang Convergence Technology Industrial District: “All of our married employees moved down with us, and they plan to have children in Pohang.” President Kim added, “Pohang’s salmon companies are an excellent counterexample to the joke that ‘Pangyo is the southern boundary’ of Korea’s innovation belt.”
Their return is not driven simply by hometown loyalty. POSTECH offers world-class research infrastructure optimized for technology and product development, including a synchrotron radiation accelerator, a cryo-electron microscope, the world’s sixth — and Northeast Asia’s only — Apple Developer Academy, and the world’s first Apple Manufacturing R&D Support Center. By 2030, “Scale-up Ground,” a facility supporting companies looking to grow beyond their first five years, is set to open across from Change-up Ground.
The city also offers ample opportunities for investment and commercialization through networks linking POSCO Group affiliates, government agencies and local authorities. In effect, companies, universities and the region operate as a single ecosystem, building a foundation for growth.
Deregulation and support measures for businesses, the core engine of regional growth, are also expected to expand. Kim Yoon-sik, executive at POSCO Investment Engineering, who was met at POSCO Cheongsongdae, cited as a representative challenge that it took six years just to obtain site permits for hydrogen reduction steelmaking, the future technology of the steel industry. In response, Kwon Hye-rin, head of the National Transformation Task Force, said: “We will push forward so that various regulations can be improved at once through the Mega Special Zone Act. We are also reviewing whether hydrogen reduction steelmaking can be supported in a similar manner to Hyundai Motor Group’s Saemangeum investment, which is currently being carried out under the government’s full support.”
Companies, jobs and education matter, but once cultural infrastructure is also in place, there is no longer any reason to head to Seoul. That is why POSTECH is pushing to bring Kyobo Book Centre into an “education building” it plans to construct on its campus with an investment of 180 billion won. President Kim and POSTECH Vice President Kim Jong-kyu personally met Shin Chang-jae, chairman of Kyobo Group, to make their pitch. While large bookstores face restrictions on opening new outlets due to regulations protecting livelihood-type small businesses, Kyobo Book Centre ran a pop-up store at POSTECH’s Park Tae-joon Library for a week starting on the 18th of this month, signaling its support for POSTECH’s vision.
The National Transformation Task Force plans to follow up its Pohang visit with trips to Naju in South Jeolla Province and Daejeon. “In the past, we assumed that if people moved, settlement conditions would naturally follow. But in reality, that has not been enough,” Kwon said. “The purpose of the National Transformation Field Lab is to find the keys to success at regional sites and reflect them in central government policy.”
Kwon Hye-rin (front row, left), head of the National Land Spatial Transformation Policy Task Force, and Kim Jong-kyu, vice president of POSTECH, listen to lead mentor Yoon Sung-kwan at the Apple Developer Academy in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, on the 22nd. POSTECH