Naver Corp., South Korea’s No. 1 search engine, on Monday opened the nation’s 10th creative economy center in Gangwon Province with aims to create a big data hub for maximum use of digital information.

The Gangwon Center for Creative Economy, located on a 1,267-square-meter site in the provincial capital of Chuncheon, is the latest in a series of government-supported regional offices helping to nurture start-ups and venture companies across industries. 

“Big data is a new form of capital in the creative economy era, as it creates high value and jobs without physical resources,” said President Park Geun-hye during the center’s opening ceremony.

“The Gangwon center, equipped with Naver’s data analysis prowess, will become a big data hub that generates numerous new businesses and quality jobs.”

Naver, which operates another data center in the region, is a leading developer of data analysis technologies in Korea, as it has access to the data its users provide through their Internet searches.

Through the center, the company aims to build a combined infrastructure for collecting, processing and distributing the nation’s soaring bank of information by teaming up with the local government.

As part of the project, the center will run a big data portal in partnership with the nation’s 50 related organizations, while commercial data and analysis tools will be traded via a big data market as well.

Data-based IT solutions will be shared among other creative economy centers nationwide that are mostly dedicated to manufacturing sectors.

In order to nurture start-ups and smaller firms in the field, Naver and other government and financial organizations will create a big data fund worth 105 billion won ($96 million).

Gangwon Province’s key businesses, including tourism, health care and agriculture, are also expected to see a big boost through big data analysis.

Naver will develop customized tourist programs based on its data analysis and help with things like marketing and e-commerce activities.

In partnership with a local medical equipment complex, the company will support smart health care businesses such as smart medical equipment and remote medical treatment.

In the agricultural sector, big data will be used for scientific farming to generate value-added crops and medicines using them.

“Naver has continued to work for the consolidation of the big data analysis system,” said a company official. “We will continue to create new values based on big data.”

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)