![[U.S.–KOREA TRADE] ‘Disney-Adjacent’ Florida County Pitches Itself as the New U.S. Gateway for Korean Tech](https://cdn.media.bluedot.so/bluedot.kentertechhub/2026/05/6r3510_202605051031.jpg)
Osceola County Launches Korea Push, Positions Itself as ‘U.S. Beachhead’ for Korean Industry
13-Member Trade Mission Wraps 6-Day Seoul Visit; SRS $53M HQ Deal, FKACC MOU Sealed
■ Full-spectrum agenda: KBIZ · Lotte · LG · KITA · MBC sequentially engaged
■ Off-program: dinner with Prof. Ko Sam-seog (former KCC commissioner) frames ‘co-evolution’ as the agenda’s undertone
■ KSEA UKC 2026 in Orlando flagged as the next inflection point; ‘K-Booth’ at MCO under review
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Florida’s Osceola County is mounting a full-court press to attract Korean advanced-technology firms to its shores. A 13-member economic mission led by Vice Mayor Cheryl Grieb spent six nights and seven days in Seoul (April 27 – May 2), engaging the entire spectrum of the Korean economy and capping its visit with a US$53 million (about ₩74 billion) U.S. headquarters investment deal with Korean autonomous-driving radar leader Smart Radar Systems (SRS, CEO Kim Yong-hwan). Vice Mayor Grieb personally executed the agreement.
Jung Han
Under the deal, SRS — through its U.S. subsidiary SRS.MOBILITY LLC — will build a four-story, 110,000-square-foot U.S. headquarters along Neovation Way inside the county’s ‘NeoCity’ technology park, combining 50,000 sq ft of office space with 60,000 sq ft of advanced radar assembly.
The project will create 190 jobs at an average wage of US$85,000 (approximately ₩120 million). Construction begins in January 2027 with completion targeted for October 2027. The county is conveying roughly 5.8 acres of pad-ready land at zero cost, and adding job-creation tax incentives of US$2,000–$3,000 per position.
On the same day in the same room, the Osceola Chamber and the Florida Korean American Chamber of Commerce (FKACC) signed a separate Memorandum of Understanding, formalizing institutional cooperation. The mission, headquartered at Signiel Seoul (Lotte World Tower), worked through a marathon of meetings: KBIZ (Korea Federation of SMEs), the Seoul Tourism Organization, the U.S. Embassy Commercial Service, Lotte Group, Inha University, the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), LG Science Park, the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) and MBC. Far from a one-off investment pitch, the visit was structured as a full-spectrum trade mission spanning industry, trade, tourism, education and media.
Off-program tracks proved equally noteworthy. Prof. Ko Sam-seog (高三錫) — Distinguished Professor at Dongguk University and former Korea Communications Commission (KCC) standing commissioner — joined the delegation’s dinner and seeded the discussion with his ‘co-evolution(共進化)’ framework for AI, content and global media networks.
Discussions also touched on tying the visit into KSEA UKC 2026 (the U.S.–Korea Conference of the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association), which Orlando will host in August, and a proposed ‘K-Content / K-Food / K-Pop booth’ at Orlando International Airport (MCO). The visit, in short, was the opening act of a long-form cooperation architecture that bundles investment, industry, tourism, education, media, entertainment and science-and-technology networks under a single arc.
Crucially, this deal was not a bolt-from-the-blue event. SRS.MOBILITY had already been designated as the Sole Source Provider of the county’s ‘advanced imaging-radar school-bus safety system’ in October 2025. The mission’s six-day Seoul itinerary marks the moment a parts-supply relationship escalated into a full headquarters commitment in just six months — explaining why the county dispatched both its Vice Mayor and the assistant superintendent of its school district to Seoul.
■ ‘All-Star’ Delegation: Government, Education, VC, Construction and Tourism in One Team
▸ Vice Mayor Grieb leads what amounts to a full-stack, ‘one-stop’ U.S. landing team for Korean firms
The most striking feature of this mission is the delegation itself. The leader, Cheryl Grieb, Vice Mayor of Osceola County (Florida), is the executive head of the county’s administration — and signed the SRS agreement personally. She traveled with Hunter H. Kim (헌터 H. 킴), Director of Osceola County’s Economic Development Center who concurrently chairs the Florida Korean American Chamber of Commerce; Casey Leppanen, CMO of Experience Kissimmee; John Newstreet, President & CEO of The Osceola Chamber; Scott Knoebel, COO (Assistant Superintendent) of Osceola School District; Jessica J. Kim, COO of Neocitylinks (the county’s NeoCity operations arm); Esther Vargas, Site Manager of the UCF Business Incubator at Kissimmee; and Leah Goeun Lee, Secretary General of the Florida Korean American Chamber of Commerce.
The private sector was equally well represented: Justin McCullough, VP of Preconstruction at T&G Constructors; Shawn Hindle, Owner-Partner at Hanson Walter & Associates (architecture/engineering); Keith Trace, Owner of 37 Capitals Partners (venture capital); Kelly Trace, Owner of REACH (marketing & communications); and Alex de Jorge, Owner of IMCI / Brightway Insurance.
Mapped onto the typical Korean-firm U.S. landing process, the delegation effectively assembles every link in the value chain: land (Vice Mayor + Neocitylinks) → design and construction (T&G + Hanson Walter) → workforce and education (School District) → soft-landing and incubation (UCF) → finance and insurance (37 Capitals + Brightway) → marketing (REACH + Experience Kissimmee) → chamber and Korean-American business network (Newstreet + FKACC). It is, in effect, a portable one-stop landing team.
■ Two Growth Pillars: a US$10B Tourism Belt and a 500-Acre Tech Park
▸ Osceola pitches itself as ‘the U.S. gateway right next to Disney’ — Hispanic-majority, fastest-growing
Osceola County sits in the heart of Greater Orlando in central Florida. Part of Walt Disney World’s acreage actually lies inside the county, and the world’s densest theme-park cluster — Universal Studios, LEGOLAND and others — is on its doorstep. Its county seat is Kissimmee. Population was 427,415 as of the 2024 American Community Survey, projected at roughly 464,000 in 2026, and among the 18 fastest-growing counties in the United States. Demographically, the county is Hispanic-majority (56%), with White (27.2%) and Black (9.9%) populations following. Median household income stands at US$72,637 (2024).
Osceola pitched two ‘growth pillars’ to Korean partners. The first is its global tourism belt, whose economic impact Experience Kissimmee places at around US$10 billion (approximately ₩14 trillion). The second is NeoCity, a 500-acre master-planned technology district the county has built up since 2017 with over US$200 million in infrastructure investment. NeoCity targets semiconductors, smart sensors, advanced manufacturing and mobility. Its anchor is BRIDG (Bridging the Innovation Development Gap), one of only three advanced R&D fab facilities of its kind in the United States, with Class 1,000 and Class 10,000 cleanrooms. Belgian semiconductor R&D heavyweight imec also bases its U.S. operations on the campus. Designed by Perkins+Will under a 50-year master plan, NeoCity’s long-term economic impact is projected at US$25.3–28.5 billion (₩35–40 trillion).
The combination is the pitch: tourism-driven global demand fused with semiconductor-grade industrial infrastructure means a Korean firm can chase business development, technology scaling and consumer touchpoints simultaneously. The county slogan, ‘Be First to What’s Next,’ is the rhetorical embodiment of that proposition.
■ Reframing Itself as an ‘Entertainment Hub’ — Disney Adjacency Meets Tech Infrastructure
▸ Lotte Group meeting explored ‘U.S. regional HQ near Disney’; sets up content–experience–sensor–mobility convergence
A signature theme of the mission was Osceola’s self-portrait as an ‘EnterTech (entertainment-technology) collaboration zone’ rather than a pure manufacturing site. With Disney World, global theme-park demand and Experience Kissimmee’s tourism-marketing apparatus on one side, and NeoCity’s sensor, mobility and smart-city infrastructure on the other, the county is positioning itself for convergence between content, experience-based entertainment, sensor-enabled services and future mobility.
That logic was on display at the April 29 executive summit with Lotte Group, where the delegation discussed a ‘Disney-adjacent U.S. regional headquarters’ play in retail, hospitality and theme-park collaboration. The Orlando–Osceola corridor draws over 75 million visitors a year. Given Lotte’s portfolio — duty-free retail, hotels, theme parks, distribution — the geography offers a credible footprint. The pitch was less ‘industrial estate, please move in’ and more ‘a U.S. base where retail, space-business, and entertainment consumption already exist at scale.’
■ ‘Relationship-Building is the Core’ — Interviews with Newstreet and Knoebel
▸ “Business works better together” / “NeoCity is the right place to start an advanced-tech business”
John Newstreet, President & CEO of The Osceola Chamber, told K-EnterTech Hub the trip’s primary purpose was relationship-building. “You can’t find success alone,” he said. “Relationships — and the trust those relationships create — are at the core of what a chamber does.”
Asked why a Korean company should pick Osceola when many U.S. counties are courting Korean investment, he replied that the answer is simple: “We came to Korea because we want Korean companies to succeed.” He invoked his organization’s tagline, ‘Business works better together,’ describing the chamber as “a non-profit organization that exists to help for-profit companies succeed.”
Newstreet also framed Osceola as more than a one-stop landing pad: “We have many resources to help businesses in Osceola. The chamber is one of them, and a good place to start; we can connect you to all the others.” That language — anchored on relationships and aftercare rather than incentive shopping — sets a different tone from the standard land-and-tax pitch.
Scott Knoebel, COO and Assistant Superintendent of Osceola School District (스콧 노벨 오세올라 카운티 교육청 부교육감), was equally direct in his interview: “This trip is about attracting Korean companies to Osceola. We are growing fast, we have land available, and NeoCity is a great place to start an advanced-technology business.” On SRS specifically, he called the project “a relationship of mutual benefit — significant for the local economy and a real source of jobs.” The school district is a meaningful actor here on its own merits: it is the county’s largest employer and is also a primary downstream user of SRS’s school-bus safety solution.
Personal impressions of Korea were uniformly positive. Delegation members repeatedly cited “the kindness of the Korean people, the cleanliness of the cities, the thoughtfulness of urban development.” Several said they hoped this trip would be the first of many — a sentiment more consistent with the start of an ongoing collaboration than a one-shot diplomatic visit.
■ Six Days, From KBIZ to MBC: A Layered Engagement
▸ Day-by-day: SME federation → Lotte / Inha / IFEZ → LG / KITA / MBC → SRS
The official itinerary lays out exactly which Korean institutions Osceola wanted on its rolodex. After arriving via Delta on April 26–27 (DL189, ICN at 14:10) and basing themselves at Signiel Seoul, the delegation began its formal program.
On April 28 the kickoff meeting was with KBIZ (Korea Federation of SMEs), the umbrella body representing Korea’s seven million small- and medium-sized enterprises. Discussion focused on trade expansion, U.S.-market entry pathways, and import-export collaboration. From there the delegation went on to the Seoul Tourism Organization to push the case for an Incheon–Orlando (ICN-MCO) direct flight, and that afternoon to the U.S. Embassy’s Commercial Service for a briefing on the U.S.-entry environment for Korean firms.
April 29 was a packed industry-and-policy day: a Lotte Group executive summit, a working lunch at Inha University’s Industry-Academia Cooperation Aerospace Center (IAIAC), a benchmarking session at the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) in Songdo, and meetings at the Incheon Metropolitan City Office of Education on workforce and student-talent collaboration. The delegation also visited MBC’s ‘Newsdesk’ studio and toured the broadcaster’s newsroom over lunch. Per delegation correspondence, the MBC visit grew to more than 15 attendees once the Osceola Korea office and FKACC representatives were folded in. Industry plus government plus media in a single mission, fanning out across Korea’s influence map.
April 30 — what would later be called the mission’s ‘headline day’ — opened at LG Science Park (Magok) with talks on clean energy, EV infrastructure and life-sciences manufacturing, then moved to the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), which represents over 70,000 member companies, to formalize ‘Osceola County as a strategic gateway for Korean firms entering the U.S. market.’ In the afternoon, the delegation arrived at SRS’s headquarters, where the mission’s biggest deliverable would be sealed.
May 1 was reserved for cultural diplomacy: Gyeongbokgung Palace and Gwanghwamun for a primer on the Korean concept of Inhwa (仁和, ‘harmonious humanity’) in business, followed by Bukchon Hanok Village and a Korean BBQ farewell dinner. The delegation flew home on May 2.
■ SRS to Build US$53M U.S. HQ in NeoCity
▸ 190 jobs · US$85K avg. wage · October 2027 completion target — a ‘results-first, MOU-second’ template
The headline deliverable of the mission was the SRS U.S. headquarters investment agreement. The Osceola County Board of Commissioners approved the acquisition-and-development agreement with Smart Radar Systems Inc. on April 20. Vice Mayor Grieb then traveled to Seoul to formally execute the deal at SRS headquarters on April 30.
Under the agreement, SRS will use its U.S. subsidiary SRS.MOBILITY LLC to construct a four-story, 110,000 sq ft (≈3,300 pyeong) U.S. headquarters along Neovation Way: 50,000 sq ft of offices and 60,000 sq ft of advanced radar-system assembly space.
The project will create 190 jobs at an average wage of US$85,000 (≈₩120 million). Initial entry begins in 2026 with 5,000 sq ft leased and 25 hires. Construction is set to begin January 2027 and complete by October 2027. The county is conveying approximately 5.8 acres (≈7,000 pyeong) of pad-ready land at zero cost, with additional job-creation tax incentives of US$2,000 (for jobs paying 125–149% of the county’s average wage) or US$3,000 (150% and above).
SRS itself is a 4D imaging-radar specialist spun out of Cyberlin’s radar division in 2017, headquartered in Pangyo, Seongnam, just south of Seoul. The company listed on KOSDAQ in August 2024. Confirmed-pipeline revenue rose from ₩4 billion in 2023 to approximately ₩93.8 billion in 2025 — a roughly 23-fold increase in two years. SRS is widely regarded as a global top-three player in automotive radar.
Its 768-channel 4D imaging radar, co-developed with HL Klemove, runs at roughly 4× the resolution of leading global competitors. The customer roster is similarly heavy-hitting: GM, Hyundai Mobis, HL Klemove, Toyota, LG Electronics, and Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare (a 100,000-unit shipment of radar sensors for an emergency-alert service for elderly residents living alone).
SRS CEO Kim Yong-hwan (Paul Yonghwan Kim) said in the company’s release: “NeoCity’s world-class infrastructure is the perfect environment for us to advance our 4D imaging radar technology.” He pledged that the company would create high-tech jobs, develop local talent and contribute to Osceola County’s rise as a premier destination for global innovation. Brandon Arrington, Chairman of the Osceola County Board of Commissioners, framed the deal as “another major milestone” in the effort to build NeoCity into a globally recognized advanced-technology center.
Vice Mayor Cheryl Grieb, who personally signed the agreement on the county’s behalf, has been a consistent public advocate for the SRS partnership. At the public unveiling of the SRS school-bus safety prototype in June 2024 she said, “We’re creating technology jobs and also creating a safer environment for our schools and our community,” telegraphing the tight linkage between technology investment and community safety that the deal now embodies.
At that earlier juncture Grieb was concurrently serving as County Commission Chair. She was first elected to the Osceola County Commission (District 4) in 2014, after eight years on the Kissimmee City Commission (including a stint as Vice Mayor of Kissimmee), and has chaired the county’s Tourist Development Council and the Greater Osceola Partnership for Economic Prosperity (GOPEP).
A licensed Realtor since 1986, she runs Olde Kissimmee Realty, a brokerage focused on historic properties in downtown Kissimmee. The fact that an official with that depth of policy, tourism and real-estate experience flew personally to Seoul to sign the agreement is itself a measure of how heavily the county is leaning into the SRS deal.
This deal is decidedly not a one-shot. SRS.MOBILITY had already been designated as the Sole Source Provider for Osceola County’s ‘advanced imaging-radar school-bus safety system’ in October 2025.
The pre-history runs deeper still: in June 2024 the county and the school district publicly unveiled a working prototype of SRS’s 4D imaging-radar bus-safety system, featuring 21 radar sensors mounted on the bus exterior to eliminate blind spots, plus undercarriage and cabin sensors capable of detecting passengers via heartbeat.
The prototype unveiling was attended by then–County Commission Chair Cheryl Grieb, School District Chair Heather Kahoun, SRS CEO Paul Kim, SRS CTO Jae Kim, school district COO Scott Knoebel, and Director of Transportation Randy Wheeler — at which point the county publicly disclosed that it was already in talks to bring SRS’s regional U.S. headquarters to NeoCity.
In other words, the April 2026 deal in Seoul is the third stage of a deliberately sequenced two-year partnership: prototype unveiling (June 2024) → sole-source designation (Oct 2025) → headquarters investment agreement (April 2026).
CEO Kim Yong-hwan told The Korea Economic Daily last fall that “SRS is the only company that has broken into the U.S. school-bus market,” projecting that bus-safety-related revenue would ramp from the first half of 2026. That trajectory also explains why the county brought its school-district COO to Seoul: this deal is, structurally, a ‘results-first, MOU-second’ template
■ [Headline Outcome ②] Chamber–FKACC MOU: Hunter H. Kim Calls Florida ‘the Key Hub for Korea’s New Economic Map in the Americas’
▸ An institutional cooperation channel formalized — and a starting line for further matchmaking
On the same day at the same venue, the Osceola Chamber and the Florida Korean American Chamber of Commerce (FKACC) signed an MOU. John Newstreet signed for the Osceola Chamber, Hunter H. Kim for FKACC; Leah Goeun Lee (FKACC Secretary General) and Jessica J. Kim (Neocitylinks COO) handled coordination.
Newstreet described the MOU as “the start of a relationship that will keep connecting the Korean business community with the Osceola business community.” He stressed that “workforce and quality of life both come out of community,” and that government alone cannot carry the load — chambers and the broader business community must move in tandem.
In a separate statement reported by the Orlando Business Journal, Hunter H. Kim said: “Florida is becoming a key base for drawing a new map of the Korean economy in the Americas.” Both Lake Nona Regional Chamber of Commerce (March 2026) and Osceola Chamber (this MOU) have now formalized partnerships with FKACC — pointing to a steadily thickening Korean-firm-attraction network across Florida within which this MOU now sits.
■ Off-Program: Dinner with Prof. Samseog Ko Frames the Visit as ‘Co-evolution, Not Competition’
▸ AI · entertainment · global-content networks: ‘co-evolution(共進化)’ thesis bleeds into the Osceola agenda
One of the most interesting threads of the mission ran outside the official itinerary. Prof. Ko Sam-seog (高三錫) — Distinguished Professor at Dongguk University, former standing commissioner of the Korea Communications Commission, and currently a member of Korea’s national AI Committee — joined the delegation’s dinner. Ko has spent the past several years pushing a ‘co-evolution(共進化, Co-evolution)’ framework, arguing that technology and industry, markets and regulation, nations and firms must move through mutually reinforcing — rather than purely competitive — evolution.
That framing dovetails neatly with how Osceola is presenting this trip. The county is explicitly not pitching itself as a winner-take-all incentive contest; the rhetoric is about long-horizon mutual growth. Newstreet’s “business works better together” maps onto Ko’s “co-evolution, not competition.” Read alongside the delegation’s MBC newsroom visit, the dinner suggests the mission’s real ambition reaches beyond pure economic diplomacy and into content, AI and entertainment-tech collaboration — turf where Osceola’s combined Disney-adjacent tourism belt and NeoCity tech park have an unusual story to tell.
▲ The delegation tours MBC’s ‘Newsdesk’ studio at the broadcaster’s Sangam-dong headquarters in Seoul on April 29 — a deliberate move to seed K-content and EnterTech cooperation as a parallel track to the trip’s industrial agenda.
■ KSEA UKC 2026 in Orlando: the Next Inflection Point
▸ August 5–8 at Omni Orlando · NVIDIA co-founder Chris Malachowsky keynote · ‘K-Booth’ at MCO under review
The Osceola–Orlando Korea agenda has a natural follow-on this summer. The Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA) will host its 39th U.S.-Korea Conference (UKC 2026) at Omni Orlando at ChampionsGate, Florida, from August 5–8, 2026. Approximately 1,500 Korean-American scientists and engineers are expected to converge on Orlando alongside Korean academics, government-funded researchers and industry. UKC is the largest annual U.S.–Korea STEM-and-entrepreneurship gathering of its kind.
The keynote will be delivered by Chris Malachowsky, co-founder of NVIDIA. KSEA’s incoming president Prof. Yong-gyu Yoon(University of Florida) told Maeil Business Newspaper that he had been “courting Malachowsky for three years” to secure the booking.
Where NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has driven the company’s public face and go-to-market, Malachowsky has overseen the technology side; he is also a UF alumnus and recently donated US$150 million (≈₩200 billion) to his alma mater.
The most notable structural shift at UKC 2026 is the debut of an ‘Entertainment Technology’ track, a meaningful expansion for a conference historically anchored in deep-tech areas like AI, semiconductors and aerospace. Yoon told Maeil: “More than half of today’s younger generation aspires to media-related careers — YouTuber, TikToker, and so on.” The new track will fold in Disney World and Pixar executives, along with senior executives from Korea’s major broadcasters, to explore content–technology synergies.
Osceola County is leveraging the same August window to deepen ties with Korean business. A ‘Florida Orlando K-Booth’ at Orlando International Airport (MCO) — showcasing K-Content, K-Food and K-Culture firms — is currently in development, with K-Pop performances also under consideration. The aim is not to add another bidding war for foreign capital but to co-locate Korean cultural visibility with Florida’s scientific and industrial network right at Orlando’s arrival gate. Combined with the standing 2025 ‘Participation Agreement’ between Osceola County, MCO and Incheon International Airport on a possible direct flight, the K-Booth concept fits cleanly inside Osceola’s broader play to bundle entertainment, tourism, industry and culture into a single cooperation architecture.
■ ‘Land + Incentives + Soft Landing’: UCF Incubator’s Andromeda Ventures Tie-Up
▸ Esther Vargas: ‘NASA-backed VC will provide capital, market access and direct NASA-network connections’
Osceola’s pitch is not just land and tax breaks. Esther Vargas, Site Manager of UCF’s Business Incubator at Kissimmee, walked K-EnterTech Hub through the program. The UCF Soft Landing Program runs across nine incubator hubs in central Florida and currently houses around 150 portfolio companies — a hub-and-spoke architecture that is unusual even by U.S. incubation standards.
In her interview, Vargas formally confirmed the incubator’s new partnership with Washington, D.C.-based VC firm Andromeda Ventures. She described Andromeda as “a venture capital firm focused on helping Korean companies enter the U.S. market.” The differentiator: Andromeda is staffed largely by former senior NASA executives, giving portfolio companies a direct line to the U.S. space-program ecosystem. Andromeda’s investment focus, Vargas said, is ‘dual-use technology’ — aerospace, semiconductors, AI, health and energy — areas where civilian and government applications overlap. SRS’s 4D imaging radar (autonomous driving on the civilian side, defense and aerospace on the government side) is a textbook dual-use technology, raising the prospect of a future SRS – Andromeda Ventures connection within this same Florida ecosystem.
Newstreet’s message dovetails: “There are many resources to help businesses in Osceola; the chamber is one, and a good starting point — we connect you to all the others.” The county’s structural pitch is increasingly not ‘come here’ but ‘come here, and we’ll see you safely landed.’
■ Outlook: A New Florida-Anchored Template for U.S.–Korea Cooperation
▸ From the traditional Georgia/Texas/Alabama HQ corridor toward a Florida route built on tourism, NASA and entertainment
Korean corporate investment in the United States has historically clustered in Georgia (Hyundai, Kia), Alabama (Hyundai) and Texas (Samsung) — manufacturing-anchored states. What Florida is now doing is opening a new lane built on a different stack: zero-state-income-tax economics, the Disney ecosystem, a prospective Korea-direct flight, NASA-linked venture capital and a UCF-style soft-landing program. Osceola’s six-day mission — and the way the county fielded both a vice mayor and a school-district COO at the same table — signals that this lane is now being pursued at the county level, not just at state-economic-development tables.
Three milestones are worth watching. First, whether the SRS project hits its construction-start (January 2027) and completion (October 2027) marks on schedule. K-EnterTech Hub has confirmed that a mid-cap Korean semiconductor firm is now in active negotiation to build a fab inside NeoCity — a second domino, if confirmed. Second, whether the Osceola Chamber–FKACC MOU translates into substantive new firm matchmaking and downstream investment. Third, whether the Incheon–Orlando direct flight discussion progresses. A direct route would mean cargo-cost savings on the Korean side and a new tourism-and-investment funnel on the Florida side.
Over a longer horizon, the test is whether Osceola can knit together entertainment, advanced industry, education and science-and-technology networks into a coherent Korea-cooperation platform. The KSEA UKC 2026 linkage, the Orlando K-Booth concept and Prof. Ko Sam-seog’s ‘co-evolution’ framework all point in the same direction: cooperation as a sustained, multi-axis architecture rather than a one-time foreign-investment headline.
Newstreet’s closing remark is the cleanest summary the mission produced. “Relationships create trust; trust creates success.” Or, as he put it on his way out: “What we’re taking home from this trip is love and happiness — and we hope this is not the last time we visit Korea.”
■ At a Glance — Osceola County’s Korea Trade Mission
• Dates / Base: April 27 – May 2, 2026 (6 nights, 7 days) / Signiel Seoul (Lotte World Tower)
• Delegation: 13 members — Vice Mayor, Chamber CEO, School District COO, UCF, tourism agency, construction, VC, insurance, marketing, NeoCity operator, FKACC
• Headline Outcome ①: Osceola County ↔ SRS Development Agreement — US$53M, 110,000 sq ft (4-story), 190 jobs (avg. wage US$85K), 5.8 acres at $0, completion Oct 2027
• Headline Outcome ②: Osceola Chamber ↔ FKACC MOU (signed by John Newstreet ↔ Hunter H. Kim)
• Pre-history: ★ Oct 2025: SRS.MOBILITY designated Sole Source Provider for the county’s school-bus safety system — six-month escalation to full HQ commitment
• Key Meetings: KBIZ · Seoul Tourism Org · U.S. Embassy Commercial Service · Lotte Group · Inha University IAIAC · IFEZ Songdo · Incheon Education Office · LG Science Park · KITA · SRS HQ · MBC Newsdesk
• Off-Program Tracks: Dinner with Prof. Ko Sam-seog (former KCC commissioner) on ‘co-evolution’ / KSEA UKC 2026 (Aug 5–8, Omni Orlando) linkage / Orlando K-Booth at MCO under review
• Osceola County: Central Florida, pop. 427,415 (2024) / one of 18 fastest-growing U.S. counties / Disney-adjacent / county seat Kissimmee / tourism economic impact ~US$10B
• NeoCity: 500-acre tech park, US$200M+ county investment / anchor BRIDG (1 of 3 advanced R&D fabs in the U.S.) + imec U.S. HQ / projected long-term economic impact US$25–28B
• SRS Profile: Founded 2017 · KOSDAQ-listed (Aug 2024) · Top-3 global automotive radar firm · Revenue ₩4B (2023) → ₩93.8B (2025) · CEO Kim Yong-hwan
• Core Technology: 4D imaging radar — autonomous-driving and defense dual-use, 768-channel architecture (4× competitor resolution)
• Support Stack: County (free land + per-job incentives US$2,000–$3,000) + Chamber + UCF Incubation (9 hubs, ~150 portfolio companies) + Andromeda Ventures (NASA-rooted VC) + ICN-MCO direct flight
• Target Industries: Aerospace · Semiconductors · AI · Health · Energy · Clean Energy / EV Infrastructure · EnterTech — focused on dual-use technologies
[Sources & Reporting]
(1) Official delegation profile (April 15, 2026),
(2) Osceola County Board of Commissioners action of April 20, 2026,
(3) Orlando Business Journal, April 23, 2026 (Ryan Lynch),
(4) Osceola Chamber S. Korea Trade Mission Itinerary (April 17 edition),
(5) The Korea Economic Daily, October 15, 2025 (‘Smart Radar Systems Cracks U.S. School-Bus Market’),
(6) ClickOrlando News6 / Positively Osceola, June 27, 2024 (SRS school-bus safety prototype unveiling — source for the Cheryl Grieb quote),
(7) The Electronic Times, TheElec, AI Times — interviews with SRS CEO Kim Yong-hwan,
(8) NeoCity (neocityfl.com); Osceola County demographics (2024 ACS); KSEA UKC 2026 official program (ukc.ksea.org); Cheryl Grieb official biography (osceola.org); Maeil Business Newspaper interview with KSEA incoming president Yoon Yong-gyu,
(9) On-the-ground reporting in Seoul, April 27 – May 2, 2026, including four exclusive interviews (SRS signing ceremony · John Newstreet · Scott Knoebel · Esther Vargas).