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Tag: South Korea

SKKU Language Institute Opens New Chapter

Posted on by SKKU

The Sungkyun Language Institute (Director: Professor Minhyo Cho) has taken a meaningful first step toward expanding its global education infrastructure.

On June 15, the institute held a successful inauguration ceremony for the newly established SKKU Daehak-ro Building in Seoul’s Daehak-ro district.

The new facility was established in the heart of Daehak-ro to further strengthen the institute’s expertise in Korean language education and global talent development.

As the fourth and fifth floors of the building are dedicated to the Korean Language Institute’s state-of-the-art classrooms and educational facilities, the inauguration ceremony was held in conjunction with the unveiling of the Korean Language Institute signboard, making the occasion even more meaningful.

President Ji-Beom Yoo, Executive Director Youngsoo Joo, Corporate Director Donghwan Lee, Vice President for Planning and Coordination Piljin Yoo, Vice President for Academic Affairs Sang Hoon Bae, Vice President for International Affairs Minhyo Cho, and approximately 50 distinguished guests and university officials attended the event to celebrate this new beginning.

Participants expressed their warm congratulations and support for the institute’s new milestone and the future growth of its Korean Language Institute.

The ceremony began with the unveiling of the signboard at the front entrance of the SKKU Daehak-ro Building.

Amid the congratulations of the attendees, the newly revealed Korean Language Institute signboard symbolized SKKU’s vision for global education and its commitment to reaching the world from Daehak-ro, where tradition and modernity coexist. The unveiling was met with enthusiastic applause.

Following the ceremony, guests toured the Korean Language Institute facilities on the fourth and fifth floors of the building. The modern educational infrastructure—including advanced classrooms designed to provide international students with a comfortable and effective learning environment, faculty offices, instructors’ rooms, student lounges, and an administrative office offering one-stop support services for international students—drew admiration from attendees.

After the tour, guests gathered for refreshments and informal discussions in a warm and welcoming atmosphere. During the reception, participants shared the view that the SKKU Daehak-ro Building would serve as a key hub for K-education, attracting students from around the world, while exchanging ideas on the sustainable growth and global competitiveness of the Sungkyun Language Institute.

In his congratulatory remarks, President Ji-Beom Yoo stated, “I am delighted that SKKU has secured a dedicated space for global education on Daehak-ro, the cultural and artistic center of Seoul. Through the opening of the SKKU Daehak-ro Building, we will provide world-class Korean language education services and further strengthen SKKU’s standing as a leading global university.”

The newly opened SKKU Daehak-ro Building is expected to become a vibrant hub where talented individuals from around the world can learn the Korean language and culture, connect with one another, and help shape the future of global education.

Sogang Leads in AI Edu for Professionals

Posted on by Sogang University

Sogang University has been designated an AI·Digital (AI·D) Lead University under the Ministry of Education and National Institute for Lifelong Education’s initiative to expand online lifelong learning through universities. The designation recognizes the University’s capacity to deliver AI and digital upskilling programs tailored to the needs of working professionals navigating industry-wide digital transformation.

The recognition follows Sogang’s work in 2025, when it developed and delivered a set of AI·D courses specifically for professionals in the finance and insurance sectors. The three-course package was designed around practical application rather than theoretical instruction. The first course introduced machine learning and deep learning concepts through hands-on Colab sessions. The second addressed how generative AI tools can be applied directly within financial and insurance workflows. The third guided participants through building a personalized AI assistant — including a financial advisor and insurance agent model — using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology. All three courses were taught by faculty from the Department of Mathematics.

Beyond course content, the program introduced a digital badge certification system to formally recognize learning progress and encourage sustained engagement. This combination of applied curriculum and structured credentialing produced a replicable model for AI and digital reskilling that is grounded in actual industry demand.

Sogang has indicated it will continue expanding its AI·D programs for working professionals in 2026, with the aim of strengthening practical AI competency across industries facing accelerating digital transformation.

Inha Develops Eco-Friendly LFP Battery

Posted on by INHA University

▲The research team led by Professor Choi Jin-seop of the Department of Battery Convergence Engineering.

A research team led by Professor Choi Jin-seop from Inha University’s Department of Battery Convergence Engineering has recently synthesized lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode materials using waste stainless steel resources, presenting the possibility of utilizing them as recycled battery materials.

As the electric vehicle (EV) and energy storage system (ESS) markets grow rapidly, the importance of resource circulation and recycling technologies for battery materials is increasing. However, in actual recycling processes, various metal components are mixed together, leaving impurities such as nickel and chromium in iron-based precursors. Until now, complex high-purity refining processes have been applied to remove these impurities, but high costs and energy consumption have posed an industrial burden.

Through experimental analysis and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, the research team confirmed that nickel and chromium impurities play different roles within the lithium iron phosphate structure.

The study found that small amounts of nickel are stably incorporated into the lithium iron phosphate crystal structure, promoting charge transfer and lithium-ion movement while showing excellent high-rate performance. In contrast, chromium is unable to be stably incorporated into the structure and instead separates into an inactive oxide phase, interfering with lithium-ion movement and reducing electrochemical performance.

In particular, the research team confirmed that the best performance balance appears at a nickel content of approximately 1 mol%. They also identified that performance decreases beyond a certain level due to increased structural distortion and defects.

This study is meaningful because it moves beyond the conventional view that impurities must always be removed, presenting a new direction in which impurities can be managed and utilized depending on their type and concentration.

In addition, the study was conducted based on impurity conditions that may occur in actual recycling environments, comprehensively analyzing the structural, electronic, and electrochemical effects of impurities in recycled iron precursors. It also proposed realistic design directions and impurity tolerance standards for recycled lithium iron phosphate cathode materials.

The research results were published in the international academic journal Advanced Science (Impact Factor 14.1 based on 2024 JCR). The study was carried out as part of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s project, “Development of New Smelting and Extraction Process Technologies for Extracting and Materializing Nickel and Chromium from Waste Scraps Containing Nickel and Chromium.”

Professor Choi Jin-seop, the corresponding author, said, “This study is meaningful in that it systematically presents which impurities can be tolerated and up to what level.” He added, “In the future, material design strategies that focus on understanding and managing impurity behavior, rather than completely removing impurities, are expected to become increasingly important.”

Original Article

Vertical AI and Workflow Innovation

Posted on by Sogang University

Sogang University held its May brown-bag seminar under SAIX Peers, focusing on the emerging landscape of vertical AI and its implications for industry transformation and national AI competitiveness. The session featured Professor Du-Seong Chang from the Department of Artificial Intelligence, who framed vertical AI not as a narrowly trained language model, but as a fundamentally different approach to redesigning how industries operate.

Professor Chang’s central argument was that the competitive edge in AI no longer lies in the underlying model itself, but in how an organization restructures its core workflows around AI capabilities — what he described as Vertical AI Transformation. Across sectors including finance, healthcare, law, manufacturing, and energy, the meaningful question is not which model a company uses, but whether it has rebuilt its operational processes in a form that AI can actually execute.

Three elements, he argued, are essential to building effective vertical AI: a high-performance reasoning model, agent-based workflows that reflect real operational logic, and proprietary domain knowledge. A simple chatbot interface is insufficient; genuine industrial application requires AI systems capable of planning, retrieval, tool use, verification, and execution across complex, multi-step processes.

The legal AI company Harvey was presented as a leading example. Built on OpenAI’s models, Harvey’s competitive value derives not from the foundation model itself but from tens of thousands of custom workflows encoding the practical knowledge of working lawyers. The case illustrated a broader point: in the vertical AI era, platform value comes from how deeply a company has mapped and automated the knowledge structures of a specific industry.

The seminar also addressed recent developments in AI agent architecture. Professor Chang described growing interest in a separate policy LLM — trained through reinforcement learning to control tool use, planning, and retrieval independently of the response-generation model. Building simulation environments that replicate real operational contexts, and generating synthetic training data through repeated experimentation within those environments, was identified as an increasingly important direction for agent development.

A significant portion of the discussion turned to AI sovereignty. Professor Chang noted that leading global frontier models are becoming increasingly closed, concentrated among a small number of companies and treated as strategic assets. Over-reliance on foreign models carries long-term risks of technological dependency — a concern that is compounded for Korean-language services, where lower token efficiency relative to English means higher operational costs for equivalent tasks. He argued that developing a fully controllable, high-performance Korean foundation model is not merely a technical goal but a matter of national industrial competitiveness.

Participants broadly agreed that vertical AI-driven transformation across energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and law is likely to accelerate in the near term, and that closer collaboration between industry and academia will be essential to building a competitive domestic AI ecosystem.

SKKU Language Institute Opens New Chapter

Posted on by SKKU

The Sungkyun Language Institute (Director: Professor Minhyo Cho) has taken a meaningful first step toward expanding its global education infrastructure.

On June 15, the institute held a successful inauguration ceremony for the newly established SKKU Daehak-ro Building in Seoul’s Daehak-ro district.

The new facility was established in the heart of Daehak-ro to further strengthen the institute’s expertise in Korean language education and global talent development.

As the fourth and fifth floors of the building are dedicated to the Korean Language Institute’s state-of-the-art classrooms and educational facilities, the inauguration ceremony was held in conjunction with the unveiling of the Korean Language Institute signboard, making the occasion even more meaningful.

President Ji-Beom Yoo, Executive Director Youngsoo Joo, Corporate Director Donghwan Lee, Vice President for Planning and Coordination Piljin Yoo, Vice President for Academic Affairs Sang Hoon Bae, Vice President for International Affairs Minhyo Cho, and approximately 50 distinguished guests and university officials attended the event to celebrate this new beginning.

Participants expressed their warm congratulations and support for the institute’s new milestone and the future growth of its Korean Language Institute.

The ceremony began with the unveiling of the signboard at the front entrance of the SKKU Daehak-ro Building.

Amid the congratulations of the attendees, the newly revealed Korean Language Institute signboard symbolized SKKU’s vision for global education and its commitment to reaching the world from Daehak-ro, where tradition and modernity coexist. The unveiling was met with enthusiastic applause.

Following the ceremony, guests toured the Korean Language Institute facilities on the fourth and fifth floors of the building. The modern educational infrastructure—including advanced classrooms designed to provide international students with a comfortable and effective learning environment, faculty offices, instructors’ rooms, student lounges, and an administrative office offering one-stop support services for international students—drew admiration from attendees.

After the tour, guests gathered for refreshments and informal discussions in a warm and welcoming atmosphere. During the reception, participants shared the view that the SKKU Daehak-ro Building would serve as a key hub for K-education, attracting students from around the world, while exchanging ideas on the sustainable growth and global competitiveness of the Sungkyun Language Institute.

In his congratulatory remarks, President Ji-Beom Yoo stated, “I am delighted that SKKU has secured a dedicated space for global education on Daehak-ro, the cultural and artistic center of Seoul. Through the opening of the SKKU Daehak-ro Building, we will provide world-class Korean language education services and further strengthen SKKU’s standing as a leading global university.”

The newly opened SKKU Daehak-ro Building is expected to become a vibrant hub where talented individuals from around the world can learn the Korean language and culture, connect with one another, and help shape the future of global education.

SKKU Successfully Hosts NGPT 2026

Posted on by SKKU

SKKU successfully hosted the 8th International Conference on Nanogenerators and Piezotronics (NGPT 2026) from June 9 to 12 at its Humanities and Social Sciences Campus in Seoul.

NGPT is one of the world’s leading international conferences in the fields of nanogenerators, piezotronics, self-powered sensors, and energy harvesting. The conference serves as a premier platform where researchers share the latest scientific advances and discuss future technological directions.

Having previously hosted NGPT in 2018, SKKU welcomed the conference for the second time this year. More than 500 researchers, students, and industry representatives from 21 countries, including the United States, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Singapore, participated in the event.

The conference featured presentations on a wide range of cutting-edge topics, including self-powered sensors, wearable electronics, AI-integrated sensing technologies, bioelectronics, energy harvesting, and sustainable energy technologies. Participants actively exchanged ideas through keynote lectures, tutorial sessions, invited talks, oral presentations, and poster sessions.

Among the distinguished speakers were Professor Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Institute of Technology, the pioneer of nanogenerators and piezotronics; Professor Mark Hersam of Northwestern University, a world-renowned expert in nanomaterials and electronic devices; and Professor Orlando J. Rojas of The University of British Columbia, a leading scholar in sustainable biomaterials. Together with other internationally recognized researchers, they discussed the future directions of next-generation energy and sensor technologies.

Editors from top-tier journals, including Nano Energy, Advanced Materials, and Joule, also attended the conference, sharing insights on emerging research trends and academic publishing strategies. In addition, a special issue featuring outstanding research presented at NGPT 2026 is planned, which is expected to further disseminate the conference’s scientific contributions and foster follow-up studies and international collaborations.

A particularly significant milestone of NGPT 2026 was the official launch of the Nanogenerators and Piezotronics Society (NPS), an international academic organization established to promote global collaboration and scholarly advancement in the field. Researchers from around the world gathered for the inaugural ceremony to share the society’s vision and discuss future directions for international research cooperation and academic exchange.

Professor Jung Min Baik of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Chair of the Organizing Committee, stated, “It is especially meaningful for SKKU to host NGPT once again following the 2018 conference. We hope this conference not only provides an opportunity for researchers worldwide to share their latest findings and discuss future technological visions, but also serves as a catalyst for strengthening global research collaboration through the launch of the Nanogenerators and Piezotronics Society.

Sogang Partners to Expand Online TOPIK Access

Posted on by Sogang University

On May 20, Sogang University’s Korean Language Education Center and BoinIT signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop and operate an online Korean language program under the Sogang TOPIK brand. The partnership responds to growing global demand for structured Korean language education and aims to make systematic TOPIK preparation accessible to learners regardless of location.

The program is designed to serve international students and foreign workers, offering a learning pathway from introductory Korean through to TOPIK examination readiness. Content will be delivered in stages, supplemented by interactive features including topic-based games, practice problem sets, and level assessment tools — elements intended to sustain learner engagement over the course of study.

The collaboration divides responsibilities along each institution’s core strengths. The Korean Language Education Center will draw on its accumulated expertise in Korean language pedagogy to ensure the quality and depth of educational content. BoinIT will provide the online platform infrastructure and operational support to ensure a stable and accessible learning environment.

Director Kim Jinhwa of the Korean Language Education Center and CEO Jongyun Lee of BoinIT formalized the agreement, with both parties indicating plans to accelerate the digital transformation of Korean language education and expand tailored services for global learners.

The Sogang TOPIK online program is expected to contribute to measurable improvements in learners’ TOPIK outcomes while removing the time and geographic barriers that have historically limited access to quality Korean language instruction.

Inha Win Bosch Autonomous Driving Challenge

Posted on by INHA University

▲The ‘SEA:ME’ team takes a commemorative photo after winning BFMC 2026. The third and fourth students from the left are Mechanical Engineering students Choi Min-hyuk and Jang Dong-min.

Mechanical Engineering students Choi Min-hyuk and Jang Dong-min of Inha University recently achieved final victory in the ‘Bosch Future Mobility Challenge 2026’ (hereafter BFMC) hosted by Bosch.

Choi Min-hyuk participated in BFMC as the leader of the ‘SEA:ME’ team together with Jang Dong-min. The SEA:ME team consists of students participating in the ‘SEA:ME’ program supported by Volkswagen Group Korea: two students from Inha University, two from Kookmin University, and one from Ajou University.

BFMC is an international autonomous driving competition hosted annually since 2017 by Bosch, the world’s largest multinational engineering company, for undergraduate and graduate students around the world. Students participate in the competition by developing autonomous driving algorithms for a 1/10-scale model vehicle provided by Bosch, and they are evaluated in the final round.

This year’s competition included 78 teams selected through global preliminary rounds. Based on monthly reports and videos submitted over six months, 20 teams advanced to the semifinals. In the semifinals and finals, the final evaluation comprehensively considered previous project performance, technical presentations, vehicle driving performance, and overall completion quality.

The SEA:ME team assumed unstable network and GPS conditions and developed its own self-localization system that does not rely on GPS to solve this issue. By focusing on reducing algorithm computation load and lightweight design, the team achieved more stable driving at higher speeds compared to other teams while successfully completing all missions, ultimately winning first place.

The SEA:ME program is a global educational program jointly conducted by the German Volkswagen Group and the Advanced Fields Innovation Convergence University Project to foster software talents who will lead the future mobility industry. Currently, three students have been selected for the SEA:ME program and are participating in the program in Germany for one year. Since 2023, the Future Automobile Project Group has supported participation in the SEA:ME program by selecting at least two students every year.

In particular, Choi Min-hyuk and Jang Dong-min are participating in the SEA:ME program with support from Volkswagen Group Korea based on their major in Future Automotive Engineering.

Choi Min-hyuk said, “While preparing for the competition for a long time, we thought we had solved every problem, but unexpected issues discovered at the competition site created many difficulties. However, by analyzing and solving problems day and night with teammates from various fields and diverse perspectives, we were able to achieve a great result.”

Jang Dong-min also shared his thoughts on the award, saying, “We were able to win by considering problems from diverse perspectives and solving them together. Based on this experience, I will contribute to the technological growth of the future mobility field.”

Kim Hak-il, head of the Future Automobile Project Group at Inha University said, “I congratulate the students for making good use of the opportunities they were given and achieving such excellent results. Starting with this victory, I hope they will grow into key talents who will lead the future mobility era.”

Original Article

Rethinking Work in the Age of AI

Posted on by Sogang University

On May 20, Sogang University’s Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute hosted a policy seminar titled “AI and Job Displacement” at the Geppert Nam Duck-Woo Economics Building. The session brought together economists and policy researchers to examine how the spread of AI technologies is affecting labor market structures and to discuss what employment and industrial policy responses are needed.

Two presentations anchored the discussion. Ahram Moon, Group Leader of the AI Economic Policy Group at the Korea Information Society Development Institute, addressed the labor market implications of AI development under the theme of “labor-friendly responses” — arguing that as AI reshapes job structures, policy frameworks must be designed with worker protection as a core objective rather than an afterthought.

Hoon Choi, Professor at Chung-Ang University School of Economics, presented findings from an analysis of Korea’s AI Voucher Program, examining how firm-level AI adoption affects employment outcomes. His research suggested that while AI adoption does not uniformly reduce total employment or wages, it may have a disproportionately negative effect on new hiring — particularly among young workers and those in temporary or daily employment. The paper’s title, “The Erosion of Entry-Level Jobs: AI Adoption and Firm Outcomes from Korea’s AI Voucher Program,” points to a concern that is often underrepresented in aggregate employment statistics.

The discussion session, moderated by a Sogang faculty member, examined whether the employment effects of AI are best understood as a technological shock or as a function of policy design — with participants noting that outcomes are likely to vary significantly depending on the type of AI being adopted, its stage of development, and the institutional context in which it is deployed. Speakers converged on the view that AI diffusion policies should be accompanied by employment impact assessments, job transition support, and reskilling infrastructure.

Director Hyunbae Chun of the Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute described the seminar as an opportunity to examine the effects of AI on labor and industry from multiple angles, and expressed hope that it would contribute to policy thinking that balances technological innovation with employment stability.

Korea’s AI Policy: A Global Media Visit to SKKU

Posted on by SKKU

A delegation of journalists from seven countries visited SKKU on June 4. The delegation included reporters from major media outlets in Hungary, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Vietnam, who visited the university to learn about Korea’s AI policies, educational initiatives, and talent development practices. The visit was part of their Korea program conducted from May 31 to June 6.

The delegation attended a meeting with President Ji Beom Yoo, during which they were introduced to SKKU’s educational vision and the current status of its education and research initiatives in the field of artificial intelligence. During the subsequent Q&A session, participants exchanged views on the university’s AI education system and its approach to nurturing future talent.

The delegation then visited the Convergence and Open Sharing System for AI (AICOSS) Project Group, where they received an overview of the project’s operations and key educational programs. They also toured AI learning facilities to observe students’ learning environments and educational activities firsthand.

This visit served as an opportunity to showcase SKKU’s strengths in AI education and research to an international audience and to further expand its global collaboration network.