Shin Bae Kim, president and CEO of SK Telecom, and chairman of the RFID/USN Association, an affiliated organization of the Ministry of Information and Communication, revealed that "RFID will be a shortcut to the ubiquitous world. Korea currently has an outstanding network infrastructure, and is providing a broad spectrum of wired and wireless combined services. This will lead to Korea becoming a leader in the world RFID industry."

On the 13th of October, chairman Kim gave a keynote speech on the subject of ’Korea’s Vision for the Ubiquitous World’. This occurred in the ’RFID/USN KOREA 2005’ event that took place in the COEX Building in Samsung-dong.

Chairman Kim opened the speech by saying, "As Korea’s IT industry represented 3.7% of GDP in 1991, and increased to 13.9% in 2004, it has played a pivotal role in our national economy. However, it is a fact that we are still depending largely on the semiconductor industry. To reduce this risk factor, and secure new growth drivers in our economy, the realization of a ubiquitous society will be the new slogan for constructing ’IT Korea’.

He also indicated that wired and wireless combined services such as wireless Internet, location-based service, mobile music, have been widely distributed in the Korean telecommunications market. Therefore, customers have already experienced the seamless ubiquitous services offered by many new devices and networks. This will lay a solid foundation for accelerating future entries into the ubiquitous world.

In addition, Chairman Kim commented, "A wide range of network technologies have been emerging over the last several years. This has allowed people to use their computers anytime and anywhere. This has also encouraged network operators to put different networks together and upgrade them. The development of a variety of different networks is one of the most important factors in realizing a ubiquitous world. To date, SK Telecom as a leader in CDMA cellular network technology is stepping up its investment efforts in the WCDMA network. The company is also investing in a variety of networks that include WLAN and Wibro."

Chairman Kim also said, "The size of the world’s RFID market is expected to reach 9.8 billion US dollars by 2010. Out of this, the Korean market is expected to realize 13% of the global market. This amounts to 1.3 billion US dollars. In this regard, there is a strong possibility that Korea will hold a leadership position in the global RFID industry. RFID is the single most important factor for making the ubiquitous world possible, and is the most advanced technology that lets users acquire necessary information actively and conveniently. However, Korea’s RFID industry does have to work diligently to assure a bright RFID future. There is no doubt that FRID is a key technology for the ubiquitous environment, but it still has a number of obstacles to overcome before the technology can be applied to people’s everyday lives. These include the expensive cost of RFID tags, absence of ’Killer’ services, and instability of the sensor networking technology necessary for reading tags. Most of these problems will be solved in the near future if the government, private sector and academic sector, cooperate closely each other", he added.

Lastly, chairman Kim suggested that, "In order to help reduce the high cost of the tags, the government and private companies should try to reduce it through large-scale projects. In addition, innovative production technologies should help reduce the current tag production costs. With respect to the instability of sensor technology, we need to eliminate the technological defects before commercializing the technology. In particular, private sectors must develop a variety of RFID service models, and test the technology."