Sangjin Lee, Chairman of the Standards Association, "We Must Train More Than 100 Standards Gurus"

2020 Standard Related Organizations New Year's Meeting Held

Chairman Lee Sang-jin

Lee Sang-jin, Chairman of the Korea Standards Association, emphasized the need to train more than 100 standard gurus (GURUs) this year to become standard makers in the digital economy era. On the 30th, Chairman Lee made this statement at the New Year's gathering of standard-related organizations held by the Korea Standards Association and the National Institute of Technology and Standards at the El Tower Marigold Hall in Seoul.

This New Year's gathering was organized as a platform for unity and exchange to advance the standards field in the new year. Marking its 10th anniversary this year, the event brought together organizations involved in standards, safety, and conformity work to share information on inter-agency cooperation measures for innovation and capability enhancement in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

On the day, Chairman Lee said, "It is possible to lead the industry only if we can strategically design standards that encapsulate innovative technologies from the basic research stage." He added, "A global collaborative network is needed to operate concept and verification standards as a mesh that accelerates the speed and scale of commercialization." This reflects the recognition of the problem that for over 60 years, national standard activities have been entrenched in a 'follower' approach, adopting advanced country standards or international standards as national standards through translation, and that there is still a lack of ability to strategically design standards at the R&D stage or develop export products using international standards.

Chairman Lee stressed that in the ongoing transition to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital economy, standards must secure a status equal to patents as an important means for innovative growth. To this end, he said, "It is time to secure governance centered on the National Institute of Technology and Standards and to cultivate personnel with accumulated standard capabilities." He added, "We must train more than 100 standard gurus who can perform the role of standard policy advisors for the National Institute of Technology and Standards and create a virtuous cycle of standardization as global role makers by developing standardization strategies, conducting standard trend surveys, and developing standards necessary for the digital economy era in their respective fields."

He also stated, "To support convergence and platform standardization of cross-ministerial standard development projects, we must eliminate blind spots in standard linkage through step-by-step standardization connections to national R&D." He emphasized the need to regularly conduct continuous standard demand discovery and standardization trend surveys based on national R&D and excellent technologies possessed by Korean companies. He also highlighted the importance of enhancing private sector standardization capabilities that can promote integrated support roles across ministries to support convergence and platform standardization of ministry-specific standard development projects.

Chairman Lee further added, "Standard-related organizations must accumulate capabilities and collaborate based on the expertise they have built in their respective unique areas with insight into the changes of the times to lead development toward a hyper-connected society." Meanwhile, the Korea Standards Association has established a new headquarters in Samseong-dong to continuously position itself as a changing enterprise and plans to create standard businesses in new technology fields such as artificial intelligence, smart cities, smart factories, and autonomous vehicles, aiming for digital transformation achievements this year, while expanding convergence businesses that span manufacturing and services.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.