'Factory permit pre-diagnosis' service upgraded

Industrial vitality, population dynamics among new metrics

Experience sessions, consulting available Wednesday through Friday

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport headquarters. [Herald DB]
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport headquarters. [Herald DB]

The government is significantly expanding a service that uses digital twin spatial data to help businesses and the public identify factory construction sites at a glance and check relevant regulations and permit requirements in advance.

South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced Tuesday that they have upgraded the tailored site-recommendation function of the "factory permit pre-diagnosis service" and introduced a new smartphone-based service for on-site inspections.

The factory permit pre-diagnosis service analyzes applicable laws and regulations for prospective factory sites in advance and lets users simulate building layout, earthwork volume, slope, building-to-land ratio and floor area ratio in three-dimensional spatial data to review optimal locations before committing to them. It links the Land Ministry's digital twin platform (V-World and K-GeoP) with the Trade Ministry's Factory-On online support system, and has been available to the public and local government civil servants since March 2025.

The centerpiece of the latest upgrade is the addition of an automatic tailored site recommendation function that helps even users without specialized knowledge easily find the most suitable factory site.

Users simply enter details about the factory they plan to establish — including industry type, preferred location, area, land category and officially assessed land value — and the system integrates a range of "locational attractiveness" indicators to recommend the optimal site address in a single step. Those indicators include industrial vitality (number of businesses and employment ratio), population dynamics (youth population ratio and population inflow rate), land value, regional capacity and lifestyle infrastructure.

In addition, the service has been expanded beyond the desktop PC environment to a smartphone mobile service. Company representatives and permit officers can now visit prospective factory sites in person and check applicable regulations and permit eligibility in real time on the spot.

Details of the revamped service will be unveiled at the 2026 K-Geo Festa, held at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, from Wednesday through Friday. The two ministries plan to set up experience booths at the event, offering one-stop consulting and user education covering the full process — from factory site selection by condition and 3D analysis simulation to online permit applications.

Lee Dae-seop, the Land Ministry's director general for land information policy, called it "an innovative case of applying digital twin and spatial information technology to everyday life to raise the convenience of public administrative services by a notch," adding that the ministry plans to expand the service to other building and land permit areas going forward.

Lee Jae-seok, the Trade Ministry's director general for regional economic policy, said the upgrade makes it "far more convenient for the public and businesses to search for factory locations and check permit requirements," and pledged to continue working with local governments and relevant ministries to enable one-stop factory site selection and permitting anywhere in the country.

The factory permit pre-diagnosis smartphone service — covering search, diagnosis and recommendations — is available through the Factory-On mobile web, while detailed analysis and simulation using 3D spatial data remain available on PC only due to system requirements.


hwshin@heraldcorp.com