South Korea is set to strike a deal with Brussels to join Horizon Europe, the EU’s €95.5 billion research and innovation scheme, as the European Commission wants more democracies outside of Europe to associate. Speaking last week, Park Sang-ook, a senior science and technology official in the office of the Korean president, said that a deal was “imminent”, according to several Korean news outlets.
The Chips joint undertaking, the EU public-private partnership which funds semiconductor research, has launched a call for collaborative research projects with South Korea. The call is one of three launched this week with a total EU budget of €216 million. “We are very happy to see the first joint call launched by Chips JU and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF),” said Woohyun Cho, director general of the Korea-EU Research Centre in Brussels.