When talking about worldwide benchmarks, people use the term "global standard." A standard means a "norm." A standard is a promise that spans the economy, industry, and technology. Technological advances can create the need for a "standard," but a single standard can also drive a leap of revolutionary scale. The Korean Agency for Technology and Standards and ChosunBiz selected the "top 10 standards that changed the world" and the "top 10 standards that changed the lives and economy of Koreans" based on a survey of experts from industry, academia, research, and the media, and reexamine the role of standards. [Editor's note]
Samsung Electronics said on the 8th that its operating profit for the fourth quarter of last year came to 20 trillion won. The 20 trillion won is not only Samsung Electronics' largest operating profit ever but also a first for Korean corporations. Semiconductors drove Samsung Electronics' results. A global artificial intelligence (AI) boom sent demand for memory chips surging, and export prices kept rising.
Samsung Electronics opened the first chapter of Korea's semiconductor success story in 1983. In February of that year, Lee Byung-chul, then chairman of Samsung Group, said the company would enter the semiconductor business. Six months later, Samsung Electronics (then Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications) said it had developed the "64K DRAM." News that Korea, an obscure developing country that had barely begun making and selling TVs, became the third after the United States and Japan to develop DRAM shocked the world.
Samsung Electronics went on to develop the 64MB DRAM, a world first, in 1992. That year, Korea's share of the global DRAM market hit 13.5%, topping Japan's Toshiba (12.8%) for the first time to take No. 1. In the same year, Korea's next-generation DRAM technology was adopted as an international standard by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC). By securing international standards early, Korea widened its lead over competitors and gained an edge in global market competitiveness.
After 2010, as development of technologies related to artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous driving gained momentum, the industry needed new chips that could transmit high-capacity data quickly. SK hynix succeeded in developing HBM (High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)) in 2013 for the first time in the world. HBM stacks memory chips in three dimensions to increase transfer speeds and reduce power consumption. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix then rolled out successive generations of HBM, leading the global semiconductor market.
The semiconductor industry has become a core driver of Korea's economy. Exports last year hit a record $707.9 billion, with 24.4% ($173.4 billion) coming from semiconductor shipments. To maintain an overwhelming edge in semiconductors, the government is steadily developing international standards. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's Korean Agency for Technology and Standards, in the Semiconductor Standardization Forum released in 2024, said it would push to develop 39 international standards related to semiconductors, including advanced packaging and strategic semiconductors, by 2031.