South Korean Invest Additional $325 Million in 6G Research

The South Korean Ministry of Science, Information and Communication Technology announced the “6G Commercialization and Standardization Research and Development Strategy”, with the goal of developing the “pre 6G technology” by 2026 to ensure that South Korea plays a strong role in the standard setting process.
The South Korean government has repeatedly stated its intention to become the first country in the world to launch commercial 6G, with a target date of 2028 at the earliest.
The new plan enriches some details of South Korea’s promotion of 6G, especially in key areas of radio access. The South Korean Ministry of Science, Information and Communication Technology has called for a focus on the 7-24GHz spectrum to overcome the capacity limit of 3.5GHz and the coverage limit of 28GHz.

At the same time, we are also committed to developing chips that support ultra large scale MIMO (E-MIMO) antennas, which will have a bandwidth four times that of current ultra large scale MIMO devices.
This research plan also prioritizes the research of ultra high speed optical transmission and 6G forward transmission component technology. It is expected that 6G based services such as urban air traffic and virtual reality will require performance assurance technology.
The MSIT statement states: “Artificial intelligence will be used to effectively allocate and link communication resources for each service requirement to ensure the performance of each service. We plan to accelerate the construction of a system that can achieve this
In addition, a specialized group is planned to be established to promote Korean technology to international standard setting agencies.
We plan to ensure South Korea’s leading position in international standards.”
The Ministry of Information and Communications plans to hold a “pre 6G Technology Demonstration” in 2026 to showcase South Korean technology to the global communication industry.
The new 6G research plan is based on the MSIT K Network 2030 plan announced in February, which identifies 6G, satellites, open local area networks, and quantum communication as key communication technologies.
According to the plan, the government’s goal is to test and launch low Earth orbit communication satellites in 2027, create an open LAN ecosystem, and increase the backbone network speed fourfold by the end of this decade.
According to a report by Yonhap News Agency in February, a research project on 6G core technology that costs 625.3 billion won ($470 million) is already underway.