Trade, Industry and Energy 1^st Vice Minister Jang Young-jin attended the 18th National Policy Agenda Ministerial Meeting presided by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on March 9 at the Government Complex Seoul, where he led discussions on measures for mitigating the concentration of datacenters in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Discussions focused on datacenter dispersion measures that relevant ministries can collaborate on more closely, building around measures announced by MOTIE this January.

The datacenter deconcentration scheme has been added under the cloud industry comprehensive support measures (Ministry of Science and ICT), and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) has been requested to cooperate in creating a cluster specializing in datacenters and speeding up procedures for datacenter construction and cluster establishment.

It was proposed that a joint task force (TF) be formed by relevant ministries and local governments to recruit datacenter companies willing to locate to areas outside of the Seoul metropolitan area, and promoting success cases through assistance in resolving investment challenges.

Attendees discussed measures for reinforcing the system evaluation for energy-intensive datacenters, as well as increasing incentives to accelerate datacenter dispersion.

The amended Electric Utility Act will be enforced as of mid-March once the vice-ministerial meeting and Cabinet deliberation and passing of resolution is complete.

Beginning in June with Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO)’s revised power supply agreement, incentives like infrastructure linkage fee discounts and backup power cost exemption will be offered.

Vice Minister Jang remarked that datacenters are at the core of digital economy, but as capital area concentration is intensifying, the burden of constructing power transmission and distribution infrastructure as the risk of power system congestion are growing.

For timely completion and stable operation of datacenters, he stressed that relevant departments and local governments must work in tandem to disperse datacenters to locations with sufficient power supply and good connection.

MOTIE will be on the lookout for datacenters interested in relocating to non-capital regions, and cooperate with relevant ministries to provide joint support in dealing with investment challenges. When a datacenter investment is confirmed after the second quarter of this year, MOTIE plans to enter an MOU with relevant institutes for datacenter deconcentration.