When talking about worldwide criteria, 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 make standards necessary, but a single standard can also drive a leap on the scale of a revolution. The National Institute of 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 are reexamining the role of standards. [Editor's note]
If Korea's history of mobile communications is compared to a "road," 1996 is seen as the year when asphalt was laid on a dirt road. That is because "CDMA (code division multiple access)" service began. CDMA is a mobile communication technology that allows many people to use the same frequency. Under the existing analog method, only one person could use a frequency, so call quality was poor and calls often dropped. Jeong Eun-seop (36), a self-employed person in Incheon who was the first CDMA subscriber in Korea, said, "There is little difference in call quality from a landline."
Mobile phones were introduced in Korea on July 1, 1988. Ahead of the Seoul Olympics, Korea Mobile Telecommunications (now SK Telecom) sold products from U.S. company Motorola. This mobile phone was called the "brick phone." Weighing 771 grams, it was assessed as more than four times heavier than today's Samsung Galaxy S25 (162 grams), making it hard to hold. The price was 4 million won, and the installation fee was 600,000 won. Above all, the core function of a mobile phone—call quality—was poor and calls dropped.
In response, in 1989 the government selected the "digital mobile communications development project" as a national project and began developing next-generation mobile communication technology. Among several mobile communication technologies developed at the time, the government focused on CDMA from U.S. company Qualcomm. Today Qualcomm is a global company, but at the time it was one of the lesser-known venture firms. CDMA was originally developed for military use and had the advantage that, even with a small number of base stations, subscriber capacity was 10 times that of analog. However, it was clearly limited by the difficulty of implementing the technology and the fact that it had never been commercialized.
The government partnered with Qualcomm and began commercializing CDMA. On Jan. 3, 1996, CDMA mobile phone service began in Korea for the first time in the world. CDMA led to an explosive increase in the spread of mobile phones in Korea. The number of mobile subscribers surged about 18-fold, from only 1.5 million in 1995 to 27 million in 2000. It also became an opportunity for Korea to shift from being an importer to an exporter of mobile communication technology and devices. Korea's exports of mobile handsets grew from $470,000 in 1996 by more than 40% per year on average, reaching $13.4 billion in 2003.
Korea also began receiving royalties from overseas companies. That was thanks to core technologies secured during CDMA commercialization being registered as standard-essential patents (SEP). In 2019, Korea also succeeded in commercializing 5th-generation mobile communication technology (5G) for the first time in the world. In 2030, the 6th-generation mobile communication era is expected to open.