Jeong Seon-jong, former president of the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), who contributed to the launch of the Mugunghwa satellite and obtained 'Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) royalties' from the American semiconductor corporation Qualcomm after international arbitration, died at the age of 82 on the 11th at 9:20 p.m., according to his family.
Born in Gwangju, the deceased graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Seoul National University and received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University. After working on the Space Shuttle telemetry test team at NASA's Houston facility, he returned to Korea and joined ETRI in 1983 as the head of the data communications laboratory.
At ETRI, he led research to convert Korea Telecom's (KT) analog telephone network into a digital network. He also served as the head of the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) research department. In a 2021 interview commemorating ETRI's 45th anniversary, he noted, "I joined ETRI to conduct research to convert the telephone network into a digital network as a computer expert," adding, "My main task was to explain what computer communications were."
When the Ministry of Science and ICT finalized plans for the first broadcasting satellite launch in 1988, the deceased was appointed head of the Mugunghwa satellite project at ETRI and contributed to the launch of Mugunghwa 1 in 1995. He served as the president of ETRI from 1998 to 2001.
During his presidency, he focused on hiring young researchers through restructuring in response to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis. During this time, ETRI successfully developed the asynchronous IMT-2000 system, contributing to the export of mobile phones by Samsung Electronics, LG, and others by unifying the world under one currency.
In particular, in 1998, Qualcomm, a joint developer of CDMA technology, was sued to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for breaching a contract related to the distribution of CDMA royalties, winning a favorable ruling on December 6, 2000, and contributed to securing $100 million in royalty distribution.
His family includes his wife Choi Young-sim, his son Jeong Dong-wook, and his daughter-in-law Jang Sun-ok. The funeral is at the 7th funeral hall of Yeouido St. Mary's Hospital, with the funeral service on the 14th at 9 a.m., and the burial at Heukseok-dong Church Peace Resting Place.