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The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) together with the Busan Metropolitan City and the National Information Society Agency (NIA), the Republic of Korea, organized the “Young ICT Leaders’ Forum 2016 (YILF-2016)” which was held during 7-9 September 2016 in Busan City, the Republic of Korea. The forum for the first time featured ‘Busan Global Smart Cities Challenge’, which was a competition opened for young people to present their innovative ideas on harnessing the power of digital technologies in making a city smarter, safer, and friendlier to environment thereby improving quality of life of the citizens.

The Forum held at Exhibition Hall 1, BEXCO, Busan, was hosted by the Busan Metropolitan City and supported by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (Republic of Korea), LG CNS, and ATDI. 

The YILF 2016 aims to promote an active participation of youth in the digital economy, including (1) promoting the engagement of youth in the field of ICTs; (2) decreasing the digital divide; and (3) promoting research on emerging ICTs particularly Internet of Things (IoT).

This Forum is composed of the following parts:
  2-day Conference and Busan Global Smart Cities Challenge (the 7th & 8th of Sept);
  Welcome and Networking reception (Evening of the 7th & 8th);
  Exploring the city of Busan (the 9th Sept.)  

The Forum focused on connecting, sharing and empowering the youth in the ICT sector in order to enhance their capacity on creating the start-up business of their own and to be a competitive positioning in their professional work field. Hence, the ultimate goal of YILF is to offer a platform where the young ICT leaders can exchange their knowledge and building up the innovative concepts into reality by working closely together as a team, which in turns, the benefits to the IoT industry locally and internationally.

The YILF-2016 is the third forum organized by ITU and Busan Metropolitan City since the MoU between the two were signed at PP-2014 in Busan City. The MoU is aimed to, inter alia, promote the engagement of youth in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This year, the YILF 2016 was attended by 235 participants from 22 countries over 3 days. Out of 235 participants, 39 participants came from about 22 countries; 27 foreign participants currently stay in Korea; and 168 people are Koreans.

The Busan Global Smart Cities Challenge, for the first time, was organized as part of the Forum and was open to applications from around the world. Out of 246 applications, 25 people were selected to join the forum. The successful applicants were sponsored by Busan Metropolitan City for their air travel and hotel accommodation.  

Download Photos

- Day 1 Photos (7 September 2016)
- Day 2 Photos (8 September 2016)
- Day 3 Photos (9 September 2016)