Over the past few months South Korea has announced a series of high-profile projects pertaining to developing digital infrastructure such as hyperscale data centers capable of handling huge Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads. The latest in this series of projects is a proposed Asia Pacific Cloud Park that will come up in Samcheok, located in Gangwon province.
According to a report by Maeil Business Newspaper, Korea Southern Power Co., has signed a “business agreement to create an Asia-Pacific Cloud Park data center” with Samcheok City Government. Samcheok Mayor Park Sang-soo and Southern Power President Kim Jun-dong attended the signing ceremony. The facility will come up at the site of Samcheok Bit Dream Headquarters.
The publication quoted Kim Jun-dong, president of Southern Power Co. as saying, “The demand for data centers will increase rapidly for the development of artificial intelligence and the transition to an intelligent information society.” He added, “We will continue to make efforts to promote various projects such as using idle sites and discovering distributed power sources to build a data center.”
According to the agreement, the two organizations agreed to cooperate to establish data center related infrastructure, discover institutional and support policies to attract tenant companies, and secure sustainable power supply plans in line with environmental and energy policies.
This project is also significant because it is in line with the decentralisation policy being followed by the government that is aiming to ensure that the country’s digital ambitions are spread across its length and breadth. South Korea Development Co. will oversee the regional distribution of data centers.