This is a list of Korean inventions and discoveries; Koreans have made contributions to science and technology from ancient to modern times. In the contemporary era, South Korea plays an active role in the ongoing Digital Revolution, with one of the largest electronics industries and most innovative economies in the world. [1] [2] The Koreans have made contributions across a number of scientific and technological domains. In particular, the country has played a role in the modern Digital Revolution through its large electronics industry with a number of modern revolutionary and widespread technologies in fields such as electronics and robotics introduced by Korean engineers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and scientists.
Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically divided at or near the 38th parallel between North Korea and South Korea. Both countries proclaimed independence in 1948, and the two countries fought the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The region is bordered by China to the north and Russia to the northeast, across the Amnok (Yalu) and Duman (Tumen) rivers, and is separated from Japan to the southeast by the Korea Strait.
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone. The country's western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. Like North Korea, South Korea claims to be the sole legitimate government of the entire peninsula and adjacent islands. It has a population of 51.96 million, of which half live in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, the ninth most populous metropolitan area in the world. Other major cities include Busan, Daegu, and Incheon.
The economy of South Korea is a highly developed mixed economy. By nominal GDP, the economy was worth ₩2.61 quadrillion. It has the 4th largest economy in Asia and the 12th largest in the world as of 2024. South Korea is notable for its rapid economic development from an underdeveloped nation to a developed, high-income country in a few decades. This economic growth has been described as the Miracle on the Han River, which has allowed it to join the OECD and the G20. It is included in the group of Next Eleven countries as having the potential to play a dominant role in the global economy by the middle of the 21st century. Among OECD members, South Korea has a highly efficient and strong social security system; social expenditure stood at roughly 15.5% of GDP. South Korea spends around 4.93% of GDP on advance research and development across various sectors of the economy.
The Lower Paleolithic era on the Korean Peninsula and in Manchuria began roughly half a million years ago. The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 8000 BC and the Neolithic period began thereafter, followed by the Bronze Age by 2000 BC, and the Iron Age around 700 BC. The Paleolithic people are likely not the direct ancestors of the present Korean people, but their direct ancestors are thought to be the Neolithic People of about 2000 BC.
Sejong, personal name Yi To, commonly known as Sejong the Great, was the fourth monarch of the Joseon dynasty of Korea. He is regarded as one of the greatest rulers in Korean history, and is remembered as the inventor of Hangul, the native alphabet of the Korean language.
LG Electronics Inc. is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest chaebol in South Korea, and often considered as the pinnacle of LG Corp with the group's chemical and battery division LG Chem. It comprises four business units: home entertainment, mobility, home appliances & air solutions, and business solutions. LG Electronics acquired Zenith in 1995 and is the largest shareholder of LG Display, the world's largest display company by revenue in 2020. LG Electronics is also the world's second largest television manufacturer behind Samsung Electronics. The company has 128 operations worldwide, employing 83,000 people.
Sungkyunkwan University is a private research university with campuses in Seoul and Suwon, South Korea.
The Suwon Samsung Bluewings are a South Korean football club based in Suwon that competes in the K League 2, the second tier of South Korean football. Founded in December 1995, they have won the K League on four occasions, as well as the Asian Club Championship twice, in 2000–01 and 2001–02.
Hanyang University is a private research university in Seoul and Ansan, South Korea. Hanyang derives from the former name of the capital Seoul used during the Joseon period. The university was founded in 1939 as an engineering school, and was the country's first college to offer engineering and architecture programs.
SK Hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. SK Hynix is one of the world's largest semiconductor vendors.
Like most other regions in the world, science and technology in Korea has experienced periods of intense growth as well as long periods of stagnation.
Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's sixth largest metropolitan economy in 2022, trailing behind Paris, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and New York, and hosts more than half of South Korea's population. Although Seoul's population peaked at over 10 million, it has gradually decreased since 2014, standing at about 9.6 million residents as of 2024. Seoul is the seat of the South Korean government.
A quantum dot display is a display device that uses quantum dots (QD), semiconductor nanocrystals which can produce pure monochromatic red, green, and blue light. Photo-emissive quantum dot particles are used in LCD backlights or display color filters. Quantum dots are excited by the blue light from the display panel to emit pure basic colors, which reduces light losses and color crosstalk in color filters, improving display brightness and color gamut. Light travels through QD layer film and traditional RGB filters made from color pigments, or through QD filters with red/green QD color converters and blue passthrough. Although the QD color filter technology is primarily used in LED-backlit LCDs, it is applicable to other display technologies which use color filters, such as blue/UV active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) or QNED/MicroLED display panels. LED-backlit LCDs are the main application of photo-emissive quantum dots, though blue organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels with QD color filters are now coming to market.
The mobile phone industry in South Korea consists of domestic network infrastructure provision and the production of consumer mobile handsets.
Kim Yoo-jung is a South Korean actress. She debuted as a model for a confectionery brand at the age of four. After her acting debut in 2003, she became one of the most in-demand child actresses in Korea. She gained public attention for starring in television series Dong Yi (2010), Moon Embracing the Sun (2012), May Queen (2012), Golden Rainbow (2013), Secret Door (2014) and Angry Mom (2015). She also starred in the films Commitment (2013), Thread of Lies (2014), and Circle of Atonement (2015). She hosted music show Inkigayo from November 2014 to April 2016.
Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous affiliated businesses, most of which operate under the Samsung brand, and is the largest chaebol in South Korea. As of 2024, Samsung has the world's fifth-highest brand value.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is currently the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, accounting for 70% of the group's revenue in 2012, and has played a key role in the group's corporate governance due to cross ownership. It is majority-owned by foreign investors.
Samsung SDI Co., Ltd. is a battery and electronic materials manufacturer headquartered in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. Samsung SDI operates its business with Energy Solutions and Electronic Materials segment. The Energy Solution segment manufactures rechargeable batteries used for IT device, automotive, and Energy Storage System (ESS) applications, and the Electronic Materials segment produces materials for semiconductors and displays. In the first half of 2022, Samsung SDI is ranked sixth in the world with a market share of 5 percent according to SNE research. In 2022, Samsung SDI started to build pilot line for solid-state batteries in the South Korean city of Suwon and began its first production from the very line in 2023.
LG Pay was a mobile payment and digital wallet service by LG Electronics that let users make payments using compatible phones. The service supported contactless payments using near-field communication (NFC), and also incorporated wireless magnetic communication that allowed contactless payments to be used on payment terminals that only supported magnetic stripe transactions.
Joseon Exorcist (Korean: 조선구마사) is a South Korean historical-supernatural horror television series. The series, directed by Shin Kyung-soo and written by Park Gye-ok, stars Jang Dong-yoon, Park Sung-hoon and Kam Woo-sung. The series follows the fight of the royal family to protect people from the evil spirits, who use human frailties to demolish Joseon. The first two episodes aired on SBS TV on March 22 and 23, 2021, at 22:00 (KST) before being canceled due to historical inaccuracies and Chinese props present in the series that resulted in backlash from many Korean viewers.
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(help)The first commercial synchronous DRAM, the Samsung 16-Mbit KM48SL2000, employs a single-bank architecture that lets system designers easily transition from asynchronous to synchronous systems.
Going from China to Korea and from Korea to Japan, the pagoda evolved in varying styles and materials: brick pagodas were more numerous in China, stone pagodas fairly soon predominated in Korea, and wooden pagodas were most popular in Japan.
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(help)Unlike the Chinese brick pagodas, the Silla people used granite stones in building the base of brick pagodas, probably due to the fact that the Silla people were more skilled in the technique of cutting stones, and quality granite is abundant in the Korean peninsula.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)They later devised three different systems for writing Korean with Chinese characters: Hyangchal, Gukyeol and Idu. These systems were similar to those developed later in Japan and were probably used as models by the Japanese.
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(help)Finally, there was the recently developed pigyok chinchollae (flying-striking-earthquake-heaven-thunder), sometimes rendered as "the flying thunderbolt," a hollow iron ball packed with gunpowder and equipped with a fuse. This ingenious device was fired from a cannon over the walls of enemy fortifications and into the midst of the defenders clustered within, where, if all went well, it exploded.
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has generic name (help)Koryo potters also experimented with the use of copper for red designs under the glaze, since ground copper pigment fires red in the reducing kiln atmosphere. This technique was started in the twelfth century. Many scholars agree that Chinese Yuan wares with underglaze red design were inspired by the Koryo potters' use of copper red at the time when the Yuan and Koryo courts had very close political ties.