Luang Prabang–Sejong City Startup Ecosystem Partnership

Luang Prabang, Laos's former royal capital and a UNESCO World Heritage city, has seen rapid but informal small-business growth: provincial officials counted 2,788 new micro and small enterprises created in the preceding three years, yet only around 250 of an estimated 10,000 area businesses were formally registered with the Luang Prabang Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LPCCI).
In December 2024, LPCCI, Souphanouvong University and the province's Department of Industry and Commerce hosted a four-day workshop with South Korea's Sejong City, Sejong Techno Park and a consortium led by Hannam University. Korean advisers, including Professor Yoon-Sik Shin, identified limited entrepreneurial experience, weak access to funding and a shortage of mentoring as the ecosystem's core gaps, and the two sides jointly proposed practical entrepreneurship education, internship placements, one-on-one mentoring and a dedicated startup-support centre.
A follow-up exchange brought Souphanouvong University and LPCCI representatives to Sejong City and Sejong Techno Park in February 2025 for lectures on Korea's startup-policy history, institutional visits and joint action-planning sessions.
This is a young, capacity-building partnership: at the time of writing no post-intervention outcome data (new registrations, jobs created, funding raised) had been published, so its impact should be read as promising but unproven.

Read the full analysis: https://laotiantimes.com/2024/12/11/luang-prabang-launches-startup-ecosystem-initiative-with-south-korea/