The Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Korea Entrepreneurship Foundation, and the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency (KOSME) said on the 26th that they held the "2026 Retry Support Headquarters operations council" at the Korea Entrepreneurship Foundation.
Launched in Dec. last year, the Retry Support Headquarters is a cooperative system that spreads social awareness of turning failure experiences into an asset and provides comprehensive support for retrying businesspeople through information, networking, and policy linkages. It is operated with a structure in which the private sector oversees and public institutions handle execution. It was promoted as a follow-up to the national startup era strategy meeting presided over by President Lee Jae-myung on the 30th.
The meeting that day was chaired by the Korea Entrepreneurship Foundation, which oversees the Retry Support Headquarters, with the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency (KOSME), which is in charge of regional centers, presenting the operations plan for the headquarters, and support agencies such as the Korea Institute of Startup and Entrepreneurship Development (KISED) taking part.
Participating institutions announced the 2026 retry support policies and key program implementation plans and discussed each institution's role and ways to cooperate.
First, centered on the headquarters, various programs will be pursued to share failure experiences and spread a culture of retrying. Programs will include the "Failure Concert," which spreads retry cases; the "Healing Camp," where those who experienced failure and the general public empathize; and the "Retry Community," which shares experiences of closure and restarting a business. A Retry IR League, in which finalists compete on "Retry Day" after regional preliminaries, will also be held.
A challenge platform will also be built where challenge and failure histories become an asset. The current Retry Comprehensive Support Center website will be revamped into the Retry Support Headquarters homepage in the first half of the year to strengthen functions and enhance content. The homepage will provide practical content such as cases of overcoming failure and a closure guidebook.
Customized consulting and funding will be provided for each stage of retrying. For corporations in managerial crisis, rehabilitation consulting will be supported from commencement to approval for corporations applying for rehabilitation, and this year, 5 billion won in dedicated funds for corporations with rehabilitation approval will be allocated to aid their recovery. For restarted corporations, 115 billion won will be provided through the Retry Success Package and restart loan financing, with customized support offered to about 750 companies. A 200 billion won Retry Fund will be created to invest in retrying corporations.
To boost businesspeople's motivation to try again, the "Retry Day" event, which had been held on an arbitrary day each year since 2013, will be held during the third week of November, Global Entrepreneurship Week, starting this year. It will recognize contributors to restarting businesses and winners of case competitions, and will host a failure talk concert, seminars, and the Retry IR finals to share the year's achievements. In addition, in cooperation with local governments and Centers for Creative Economy and Innovation, more than four retry seminars and policy forums will be held nationwide to spread a "retry boom-up" atmosphere.
Minister Han Seong-sook of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) said, "The Retry Support Headquarters will record failure not as a simple experience but as startup performance and accumulate it as data that becomes an asset for success," adding, "We will strengthen stage-specific customized support so that founders preparing to try again can take another shot, and we will continue to work to improve social perceptions of failure and spread a culture of retrying."