Science ministry to host global ICT standards conference marking 10th year

The science ministry said Monday it will hold the 2026 Global ICT Standards Conference with the intellectual property office in Seoul from Nov. 2 to 4, bringing together about 1,000 experts to discuss standards and patents for physical and agentic AI. This year's 10th anniversary event, at the El Tower in Yangjae, is themed "opening the era of physical AI with standards and intellectual property."

The gathering will also cover standardization of quantum and satellite communications technology. Alongside official bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union and the International Organization for Standardization, the conference will hear from fact-based standards groups including MLCommons and the IEEE, the regional standards body ETSI, and Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority.

KAIST professor Jang Young-jae opens the program at 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 2 with a keynote on autonomous manufacturing using physical AI in factories, cases from industrial sites and the role of standards in spreading the technology. A talk concert with Korean and foreign experts on standards and patents follows.

The opening day also features a presentation on the AI Partnership Project, an effort led by Korea's Telecommunications Technology Association and Europe's ETSI in cooperation with the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions in the United States and Japan's Telecommunication Technology Committee. Awards for standards and patent management will be handed out, with 27 commendations and citations in total.

The program then splits into a global track covering AI, quantum and satellite communications standards strategy, and a domestic track that includes a seminar on standards patents and a public hearing on a standards framework for physical AI and ICT convergence.

"Standards are the rules that allow different technologies and systems to interoperate, and standardization matters for getting ahead technologically," said Lee Do-kyu, director general of the ministry's information and communications policy office. "We will support the expansion of investment to secure international standards and patents and the creation of an open ecosystem, alongside technology development, so that our technologies spread globally and our standards competitiveness is strengthened."

Kim Il-kyu, director general of intellectual property policy at the intellectual property office, said major countries including the United States and Japan treat standards as part of their hegemony strategies and are strengthening national standards and patent strategies to capture future markets. The office will bolster policies to secure high-value standard patents from the research and development stage in next-generation communications and physical AI, he said.