Regional AX Bridge @ Korea 2026
A four-way agreement with UPSI signed April 16, 472,000 ringgit in funding… exhibiting at Regional AX Bridge @ Korea, Oct. 13-14 at COEX
The Ministry of Science and ICT (과학기술정보통신부) and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (정보통신산업진흥원, NIPA) hold the first Regional AX Bridge @ Korea (지역 AX 브릿지@KOREA) on Oct. 13 and 14 at COEX THE PLATZ (코엑스 더플랏츠) in Seoul.
Twenty AI companies headquartered outside the capital region will run booths and hold one-on-one meetings with overseas buyers and adopting institutions, and the opening ceremony carries a contract and MOU signing session. The companies were selected in July and are going through diagnostics and commercialization consulting; a participant session was held in Gangnam, Seoul on Aug. 28.
Among the 20 exhibitors, Appmedia (앱미디어) of Chuncheon has already closed a public-sector contract abroad. It was selected in April to build digital textbooks for Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI), Malaysia's national education university.
The agreement was signed on April 16 at UPSI in Tanjung Malim, Perak, as a four-way memorandum among Sahmyook University (삼육대학교), UPSI, Appmedia and the Malaysian e-publishing firm Appbooks.
The work covers an interactive Malay-language e-module for early literacy in the first and second grades, aligned with the Malaysian education ministry's standard curriculum. Combined cash and in-kind investment from the participating institutions is 472,000 ringgit (about 175 million won), with the first development phase due to finish on Dec. 31. CEO Park Sung-hoon (박성훈) said in an Aug. 28 interview that the wider Malaysian digital textbook program runs through 2030.
Sixty overseas trips in three years… a vice minister at the Putrajaya demonstration
The route in ran through POSCO International's (포스코인터내셔널) large–small business cooperation program. Over three years the company made some 60 overseas trips to exhibitions and export consultation events, and a meeting with local education executives at an export consultation event in Kuala Lumpur started the process.
That December the company demonstrated English, science and mathematics editions at the education ministry in Putrajaya. About 30 people gathered in a large hall, and Park said the company only learned afterwards that a vice minister had been among them; he was abroad at the time and the vice president ran the demonstration. Korea was then pursuing AI digital textbooks of its own, Park said, which made it the model Malaysia was looking at. The company set up a local joint venture in April 2025 and now has three staff in Shah Alam. Appmedia entered Sahmyook University's startup incubator in March 2021 and field-tested its app-book textbooks at Malaysian universities under a global validation program run by the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority and Incheon Technopark.
Downloads only while signed in to an app store… university textbooks at home
The product is an AI app-book, carrying VR, video, quizzes, mini-games and link-outs that conventional e-books cannot. Park pointed to security as the reason the format took hold in Korea's university textbook market. Because the content ships as an application, it can only be downloaded while signed in to the App Store or Play Store, and the Prophe (프라페) distribution platform requires registration, which the company says makes unauthorized redistribution impractical.
The business runs on two tracks: a domestic edition centered on university textbooks and a global edition centered on Malaysia. Prophe is a distribution platform built only for app-books, which the company says suits material meant for repeated study.
Agreements with 82 companies in 13 countries, 18 university textbooks… and a magazine in Hungary
Appmedia says it has signed cooperation agreements with 82 companies in 13 countries. Beyond digital textbooks, it has produced language and religious study materials and a pilgrimage guidebook for Muslim-majority markets from its Malaysian base, and has won orders for 18 local university textbooks to be delivered by next year, with the language and religion titles aimed at a 1.7 billion-strong Arabic-speaking readership. A magazine project in Hungary is due out this year.
The company is one of 20 regional AI firms exhibiting at Regional AX Bridge @ Korea (지역 AX 브릿지@KOREA), held Oct. 13 and 14 at COEX THE PLATZ in Seoul. Its stated matching targets are institutions in Malaysia and Vietnam looking to adopt AX, government departments handling digital education and smart infrastructure policy, and local education media and publishing groups. Appmedia was founded in 2025 and is based in Chuncheon, Gangwon.
Inside the Regional AX Bridge program Appmedia joined… diagnostics and consulting after the July selection… NIPA offers to connect exhibitors to its overseas offices
What Appmedia is looking for at the event is set out in the exhibitor profile: institutions in Malaysia and Vietnam seeking to adopt AX, government departments handling digital education and smart infrastructure policy, local governments and affiliated agencies, local education media and publishing groups, and companies that hold cultural IP but need AI capability. Park said at the Aug. 28 session that the goal is to work outward from Malaysia across Asia.
Applications for Regional AX Bridge @ Korea closed on July 3, and selections were notified on July 13 after a document review. Selected companies went through two weeks of in-person diagnostics from July 24 to Aug. 3 and five weeks of commercialization consulting from Aug. 25 to Sept. 29. Consulting covers market-entry strategy, investment positioning, IR materials and contract and intellectual property review, and the per-company assignments repeat items that surface at the point of overseas entry: global commercialization, English-language standard contracts, and regulatory approvals. A separate market-viability test ran through September, and buyer invitations and meeting matrices were circulated from Sept. 7 to Oct. 2.
At the Aug. 28 participant session, Jung Su-jin (정수진), a director general at the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (정보통신산업진흥원, NIPA), said: "NIPA has bases abroad — Silicon Valley, New York, Singapore, Vietnam, the UAE in the Middle East, and India," adding that because the companies want to go global, the agency would connect them to those offices so they could meet good partners there. She also noted that global market entry came up repeatedly in the companies' consulting topics.
Three follow-on programs are planned. A recruiting match surveys engineering and marketing hiring needs and runs interviews on site; an overseas participation program selects companies by pitch evaluation and covers travel and accommodation for trade shows abroad; and a results report compiles each company's support history, buyer list and follow-up tasks. Companies selected for travel support were due to be announced on Sept. 30, and eligible markets are limited to events held before CES in January 2027. Company brochures and video profiles are also produced and released on NIPA's YouTube channel.