2025 KOOM Festival

From October 16 to 18, 2025, UKF hosted KOOM 2025 at Duggal Greenhouse in Brooklyn, New York. The event was developed as a flagship UKF project exploring how startups, brands, content, and public culture could be brought together within one shared environment. Rather than remaining within the format of a standard conference or trade show, the program was structured to allow business engagement and cultural experience to unfold as part of the same flow. Over the course of three days, the festival welcomed attendance at roughly the 10,000 scale and featured startup pitches, speaker sessions, corporate and brand booths, K-food programming, and live performances. Participants represented a wide range of sectors including technology, healthcare, consumer brands, beauty, food and beverage, and entertainment. This mix made it possible to present Korean entrepreneurship, brand identity, and cultural content not as separate categories, but as parts of one larger narrative. In retrospect, the event remains one of the clearest examples of the platform UKF is building. During the day, founders, investors, brands, and partners met through talks, booths, and business conversations; in the evening, performances and public-facing programming expanded that momentum to a broader audience. As a result, KOOM 2025 can be understood not only as a successful event, but as a record of how Korean innovation and culture can scale together in New York and beyond.