Pyeongtaek City Loses Bid for Naver's Second IDC Center

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Seo Dong-young] Pyeongtaek City has lost its bid in the competition to attract Naver's second Internet Data Center (IDC).

Naver announced on the 26th through its homepage that it had selected Sejong City for the IDC. In July, Naver had conducted a public recruitment for a construction site for the second IDC with an investment budget of 540 billion won.

Naver selected 96 sites and on the 30th of last month announced the final candidates: Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Sejong (2 sites), Pyeongtaek (2 sites), Gimcheon, Gumi, and Eumseong County. The company then began conducting due diligence.

Pyeongtaek City was the only municipality in the Capital Region to have two sites selected and made all-out efforts to attract the center in cooperation with Gyeonggi Province and partner organizations. The city council also adopted a resolution to support the attraction of Naver Cloud Data Center on the 21st. However, the city did not achieve the desired result.

A city official stated, "It is regrettable that despite our abundant infrastructure, accessibility to the Capital Region, and the economic feasibility of our proposal, we were not selected," and added, "Given the rapidly increasing demand for data centers, we plan to continue pursuing the attraction of domestic and international data centers to foster the fourth industrial revolution."