Editor’s Note
This article highlights Incheon’s strategic push to establish a digital economic zone by seeking a key partnership with Dubai’s leading commodity center. It underscores the global nature of blockchain development and the importance of international cooperation in shaping future digital economies.
Incheon Metropolitan City, which is promoting the creation of a digital economic zone based on the blockchain industry, is seeking cooperation with Dubai for global leadership.
On the 15th, Incheon Metropolitan City announced that Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok met with a delegation of 10 members, including Chairman Ahmed Bin Sulayem of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), the central government agency for industry and trade in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), at the city hall’s main reception room to discuss cooperation in the digital economy and blockchain industry.
DMCC is a free trade zone established in 2002 in the Jumeirah Lakes Towers district of Dubai and serves as a hub for commodity trade in finance, gold, diamonds, energy, coffee, and more. Currently, it hosts over 21,000 companies from 180 countries and more than 65,000 workers. Notably, due to the role of the DMCC Crypto Centre (Blockchain Technology Innovation Support Centre), about 16% of the 655 newly registered companies in 2022 were cryptocurrency and blockchain firms.
On this day, Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok and DMCC Chairman Ahmed Bin Sulayem shared insights on the successful fostering of the ‘Incheon Metanomics’ blockchain project, a digital economic innovation city, and the know-how for successfully attracting blockchain industries within the DMCC free zone. They also agreed to continue sharing information and cooperating on related matters such as DMCC infrastructure, the clustering of blockchain technology companies, and institutional improvements.
Meanwhile, Incheon City possesses an economic free zone similar to DMCC and is located in a geopolitical position that allows access to 147 cities worldwide with populations exceeding 1 million within a 3-hour flight. In particular, the Incheon Free Economic Zone, where foreigners, foreign companies, and international economic organizations can engage in free business activities, can be considered an optimal location for global digital companies equipped with blockchain technology for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The city is accelerating efforts to foster local blockchain companies and create an industrial ecosystem through various business expansions, including ▲establishing a master plan (4 years), ▲opening a blockchain technology innovation support centre, ▲operating a blockchain college (talent cultivation), and ▲hosting blockchain summits and forums, in line with Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok’s 8th-term pledge to ‘create a blockchain hub city.’