Two years ago, the barrier for foreign entrepreneurs to open a business in Korea was 100 million won high ― about $100,000. As major cities began emerging as tech hubs, the Seoul government recognized its need to catch up with the global trend as global talent sought friendlier homes.



Since then, it has been opening doors for foreigners’ start-ups as part of its creative economy drive to foster the “Korean Silicon Valley” as the next Asian tech hub.



The government vowed to do away with the stifling capital investment and other difficult requirements, establishing a D-8-4 start-up visa in October 2013 to rival programs in Canada and the U.S.



Tech industry experts here have praised the start-up visa and say it signals that the government is growing more attentive to such issues.





Entrepreneurs David Suh (right) and Jeet Dhindsa (right, background) receive counseling at the Korea Techno-Venture Foundation, a participating agency in the OASIS program, in northern Seoul. (Lee Sang-sub/The Korea Herald)



The government last year established OASIS, or Overall Assistance for Startup Immigration System, a nine-step inter-governmental business preparation program to allow entrepreneurs to earn points toward the new visa.



Participants of the young program hail OASIS’ benefits: incubation, coaching, networks, easy access to local experts in their field and even credibility among Korean businesspeople as becoming a de facto government-approved entrepreneur. Most of all, the program helps them wade through the murky labyrinth of setting up a company in Korea.



“There are so many foreigners who have amazing ideas. … And as soon as they begin that process (of starting up), there’s a massive amount of red tape,” said Jeet Dhindsa, graduate of the OASIS program and founder of My Seoul Secret, a medical tourism liaison. “So I think that the biggest asset that they provide is knowledge, how to navigate this process.”



But participants and government officials themselves point out that despite the program’s earnest intentions, it exposes layers of inter-agency infighting, excessive bureaucracy and lack of synergy, which they say is widespread in the government’s nascent start-up support for both foreigners and Koreans.



Bigger complications



Inefficiency, overlap and rivalry are seen across government efforts to support the start-up scene, as many government bodies have their own programs that are very similar to each other, but don’t often cross-promote.



Industry sources point to redundancies particularly between the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Small and Medium Business Association competing with the same programs, including overseas field trips for Korean start-ups. And as different agencies create similar programs, their performance is weighed against the competition.



“Ideally you would picture this umbrella. Sometimes they do collaborate, and they sync certain things up, but sometimes they can be almost competitive with each other,” said Dhindsa, adding that entrepreneurs must navigate between agencies that provide different pieces of the puzzle to establish a company, with basic information hard to access.



“Each one of them might have a piece of that puzzle, and sometimes they’re not sharing information, or sometimes it’s not centralized.”



Dhindsa, an American, believes Korean culture fuels a knee-jerk reaction to initially view operators of similar projects as competitors instead of collaborators.



“Sometimes I think that they are disjointed if they perceive their respective programs as competition, but I think if they just change the dialogue, maybe we can just make one program and work together somehow.”



OASIS’ very creation reflected a case of this competition. According to Choi Hong-seok, an assistant manager handling business programs at the Seoul Global Center, a comprehensive foreign resident assistance agency run by Seoul City, the SMBA pitched its idea for the start-up visa curriculum to the Ministry of Justice last year with a carbon-copy plan of the existing business coaching program that Seoul Global Center had been running since 2009, instead of proposing a collaborative program from the start.



The SMBA attempted to carry out the curriculum singlehandedly, but buckled under its inexperience in dealing with expat issues, Choi said. It then joined hands with the Korea Invention Promotion Association, Korea Institute of Science and Technology and the Seoul Global Center to split up the responsibilities. But since the agencies split the roles, with each handling respective classes, the program lacks a central go-to authority, and entrepreneurs say this increases confusion.





This flow chart featured in the OASIS brochure for 2015 explains the point system for earning a D-8-4 start-up visa. (OASIS)