We offer you a short tour of Samsung’s Digital City: a gigantic campus that serves as the R&D center for the Korean giant, but which also highlights the power of the company in its native country.
It takes just under an hour to reach Suwon by road from Seoul. Despite the stifling heat, the sky is still overcast this morning. On the side of the road, under the clouds, stand imposing residential buildings, almost all identical. And on some of them, you can see the Samsung logo. You should know that the company has particular activities in the construction industry in South Korea. And to see these high buildings, we inevitably say that the firm had these apartments built to house its employees.
However, in Suwon, Samsung employees are legion. We are indeed preparing to enter the lair of the Korean giant, in its immense campus, in its gargantuan city. Yes we are coming to Samsung Digital City. An impressive place of which we can give you an overview in a few figures and through a handful of images captured during a visit organized by Samsung.
A bit of history and some crazy stats
When it was founded in 1969, Samsung Electronics moved to Suwon and manufactured its black-and-white televisions and home appliances there. It was not until the early 2000s that the Digital City became the company’s R&D center. It is therefore here that ideas for products such as the curved television or the folding smartphone have germinated. We were just in Samsung’s lair for the presentation of the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5, among other products.
So Digital City isn’t really Samsung’s headquarters – there’s a large Seoul tower in the Gangnam district that seems to serve that function. Make no mistake, however: this Digital City is, in a way, the heart of the multinational, almost its temple. And the few official statistics tend to reinforce this observation:
- the Samsung Digital City covers an area greater than 1.72 km² (172 hectares) ;
- more than 37,000 employees work on this campus;
- more than 130 buildings dot the site;
- more than 500 shuttlescirculate daily to bring employees into the Digital City;
- there is a park in the center of the campus, the “Central Park”, and it is as vast as five and a half football pitches .
Due to a tight schedule, we obviously weren’t able to visit this Digital City as much as we wanted. However, the end that we have seen already makes it possible to realize the importance of the place for Samsung.
Museum, Olympic swimming pool and dream house
Already, the visit began with a tour of the Samsung Innovation Musuem overflowing with intriguing devices. This museum, the “SIM” is really worth a visit and clearly sets the tone: the Korean giant ostensibly displays its attachment to the significant technological advances in history and wants to legitimize the image of pioneer that it likes to cultivate.
So that’s already a good start. And it does not stop there ! Samsung then takes us to a few more recreational rooms. We pass next to one of the 15 cafeterias of the Digital City and, above all, we arrive in an area dedicated to the physical activity of employees. Note also that it was forbidden to take pictures of people working on site. Our photos can therefore, unfortunately, appear quite empty.
Samsung Digital City // Source: Frandroid
Samsung Digital City // Source: Frandroid
Samsung Digital City // Source: Frandroid
We thus pass in front of squash courts, a large room where a small table tennis tournament could be held, a huge gym and even an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Like that, in the middle of the campus, the air of nothing.
And that’s without mentioning the few football pitches seen on the site when we were in the chartered shuttle for the journalists. The notion of “Samsung city” then takes on even more meaning. Employees can spend their days on site, even for extra-professional activities. The dilemma then arises between the very practical aspect of these infrastructures and the fact of no longer really disconnecting from the workplace. Note also that there are even three nurseries in the Digital City supporting up to 900 children. What reinforces the question of this balance between professional and private life.
Finally, on a more technological aspect, the Samsung campus is also the ideal ground for certain demonstrations. The multinational has thus built a show house where each room is equipped with a galaxy of appliances from the manufacturer. The objective: to show the potential of the Samsung ecosystem.
For example, in the bedroom, putting the phone on a wireless charging pad lets you close or open the curtains, extend or retract the projector screen, and even raise or lower the bed — all according to the routine configured via the SmarThings app.
In the kitchen, the touch screen of the refrigerator allows you to have recipe suggestions according to what you have in the fridge and then to prepare all the other connected devices useful for said recipe. For example, for a dish of noodles, a button allows you to activate the water purifier to have exactly the right amount of water and another button programs the right temperature on the hob.
In short, this is the dream house according to Samsung.
The power of Samsung
Even without touring the campus in its entirety, this short visit sheds light on the empire that is Samsung. An empire so vast that it has a right to its own capital. By building a city within the city in this way, Samsung proves that it reigns supreme in Suwon and indeed in all of South Korea. Sure, the country has other giants like LG, Hyundai or Kia, but none are as ubiquitous as Samsung.
The Digital City is therefore a showcase for Samsung, even a demonstration of force, which shows that it is not only a leader in the technology sector, but also one of the major players in the South Korean economy. The campus is also the home of C-Lab. It is a startup incubator through which Samsung finances the projects of some of its employees to help them launch products on the market.
Proof once again that Samsung is not just a brand of smartphones. Far from there.
NB.Our journalist Omar Belkaab was present in Seoul and Suwon in South Korea as part of a press trip organized by Samsung from July 23 to 28, 2023.
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