Home What's Brewing? Trade Delegation Return froms Korea and Japan

Trade Delegation Return froms Korea and Japan

Wa-KoreaTradeDelegationGov. Jay Inslee and more than 100 state delegates have returned from a nine-day trade mission to Korea and Japan where promotion of trade and collaboration on everything from aerospace and wine to emergency preparedness and climate change took center stage. Including the Friendship Delegation led by state Senator Karen Fraser, this was the largest-ever Washington state trade delegation.

“There is no better way to showcase Washington’s innovation and entrepreneurial spirit than meeting face-to-face with our prospective partners, customers and collaborators,” Inslee said. “It was clear in my meetings that our state is well known for its world-class workforce and high-quality exports. I was also encouraged by the willingness of leaders in Korea and Japan to work together on issues such as health care, workforce development and climate change. This was an incredibly productive mission.”

Technology was a major focus of the trade mission. Delegates such as Dr. Jihui Yang from the University of Washington’s Clean Energy Institute met with business and education leaders to talk about potential collaborations around battery research, a key focus for improving the ability to store and distribute energy for use in everything from cell phones to electric vehicles to grid-scale utilities. Sixteen-year-old high school junior Suman Mulumudi, founder and CEO of StratoScientific, joined the delegation to promote his technology that will transform smartphones into digital stethoscopes and vastly improve the ability of doctors to diagnose and monitor heart and lung conditions.

The information and communication technology delegates led an ICT forum in Seoul that brought together dozens of participants from the information and communications technology sector. Among the participants was TUNE, an enterprise platform for mobile marketing that has grown from a small startup in Seattle to a multinational company with more than 300 employees in eight locations including Seoul.

“As Washington state’s fastest growing private company in 2014, we at TUNE were proud to participate in the governor’s trade mission,” said Bryan Kim, Managing Director of TUNE’s Asia Pacific initiative. “Opening an office in Seoul has fueled TUNE’s growth in the Asia-Pacific region and emergence as the leader in mobile marketing technology.”

Business wasn’t the only focus of the mission. The governor visited the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution in Kobe, Japan, a region that was devastated by an earthquake in 1995. Inslee spoke with experts about strategies to help communities and governments prepare for and recover from large-scale natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. Washington state is currently engaged in planning efforts for an expected large-scale earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Inslee extended an invitation to the Institute to provide assistance in a major emergency management exercise being planned for next year known as Cascadia Rising.

Delegates such as Julian Sharpe, President and CEO of Survival Capsule, a company that provides personal safety shelters, joined Inslee for the tour of the Institution.

The general consensus is that Korea is a market that continues to hold great potential for US companies, particularly now that a bilateral trade agreement is in effect. (There were at least six Starbucks within walking distance of the delegates’ hotel.) [24×7]