A Primer on Korea’s Standards System: Standardization, Conformity Assessment, and Metrology
Dong Geun Choi · 2013
NIST, Standards Services of the Standards Coordination Office (SCO), provides standards-related expertise and services to strengthen the economy and improve the quality of life in the United States (US).Monitoring and providing standards-related activities of major U.S. trade partners is part of its mission.This NIST report provides U.S. industries and federal agencies with up-to-date information about the Republic of Korea's (Korea) standards system.In 2011, the Republic of Korea, or Korea, ranked as the 12 th largest economy in the world by gross domestic product with purchasing power parity (GDP PPP) of 1.55 trillion dollars, and the 9 th largest trading economy with over 1.27 trillion dollar trading volume.In that year, Korea was one of the major trade partners of the U.S. U.S. goods and services trade with Korea totaled $125 billion.In that year, Korea was the 7th largest goods trading partner of the U.S. with $100 billion in total (two way) goods trade.U.S. exports of agricultural products to Korea totaled $7.0 billion, the 5th largest U.S. agriculture export market.This report may help U.S. exporters and importers capitalize on trade opportunities created through the newly enacted US-Korea trade agreement on March 15, 2012 by briefly explaining how the Korean standards system works.Even though Korea's standards system is transitioning towards a public-private balanced system, it is currently more public-sector-led or legislation-based similar to most of the developing and newly developed nations.It is not same as developed economies in Europe and North America.The difference may have originated from its history and development of industrialization.Understanding the roles and scope of legislation and institutions is cardinal to understanding Korea's standards system as well as many other developing or newly industrialized countries.For instance, national standards development and certification of Korea is legislated by the Industrial Standardization Act of 1961 while those of the United States and most Western European countries are based on private sector development.This report is intended to serve as a primer for outlining Korea's current national standards system by addressing the three main pillars of national standards infrastructurestandardization, conformity assessment, and metrology.It includes descriptions of major laws and institutions responsible for each pillar or specific sub-functions central to the contemporary national standards system of Korea, as well as some of Korea's policy agenda.The last section of this report contains the URLs of websites either frequently referenced in this report or useful for further information.