Maryland's got Seoul. Governor Martin O'Malley inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) Thursday, April 21 with the mayor of South Korea's capital city that focuses on bilateral cooperation between biotechnology institutions and companies.
Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon visited the State House with a delegation of Korean business and government officials to sign the MOU, and O'Malley will see Oh again during his 10-day, junket to China, Korea, and Vietnam in late May and early June.
"Korean companies invested around $5 billion in the U.S. last year, and that number goes up every year," says John Brinkley of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Washington, D.C.
As the research commercialization process ramps up at Maryland institutions like the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and Baltimore's Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland labs, Korean biotech companies are raising their sector's own profile in a national economy dominated by conglomerates like Samsung, Hyundai, and LG.
The
Korean Biotech database counts over 20,700 biotech enterprises in South Korea, and Brinkley adds that Maryland's high concentration of biotech companies and research dollars is a major attraction for emerging life-science businesses from around South Korea, including the financial and political center Seoul, to establish connections to the state.
Writer: Sam Hopkins
Source: John Brinkley, Embassy of the Republic of Korea