The Busan Metropolitan Government said Monday that it has selected 10 foreign startup teams to receive the city’s financial and legal support.

Along with the Busan Economic Promotion Agency, it picked 10 out of 25 foreign applicants to help them launch promising startups in Busan. It is the first time for a public agency in Korea’s second-largest city to run such a project.

“There was more competition than we imagined. Depending on how this year’s project unfolds, we will consider expanding the scale of the project in the coming year,” said a Busan city official in charge of the program in a phone interview with The Korea Herald.

From July this year to May next year, the selected candidates will be given subsidies as much as 4 million won ($3,500), an office space, housing benefits and immigration consultation.

The finalists come from countries including China, Japan, Kazakhstan and Britain. They are either married to a local or have stayed in the country working or studying.

The winning projects included those that encompassed automobile maintenance services; patents and copyright consultations for Korean enterprises branching out to China; and education services for foreign residents.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)