U+ Consortium Launches Public-Private PQC Demonstration
Construction of a PQC line between the South Chungcheong Provincial Office and the Civil Service Training Institute.
Development of security services for entertainment and energy companies


Quantum-resistant cryptography (PQC) offers high scalability, applicable to key security elements such as cryptographic key exchange. It can transmit data over long distances, exceeding hundreds of kilometers, and can be implemented solely through software without any additional equipment, making it a key security technology for the upcoming era of quantum computing.

The LG Uplus consortium, comprised of LG Uplus, Seoul National University, Crypto Lab, ICTK, and Dream Security, announced on the 27th that it had won a PQC-related project, hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and commissioned by the National Intelligence Information Society Agency (NIA). Following last year's efforts in the medical and industrial sectors, the consortium expanded the scope of its PQC demonstration to include the public and private sectors this year.

In the public sector, the consortium plans to build a dedicated PQC line between the South Chungcheong Provincial Office and the Civil Servants Training Institute. The distance between the provincial office in Hongseong, South Chungcheong Province, and the Civil Servants Training Institute in Gongju is 137km. Personal information such as resident registration numbers, driver's licenses, and account numbers must be encrypted when stored in databases. The consortium plans to utilize PQC to encrypt the database of sensitive information of residents generated during the Chungnam Provincial Government's operations.

In the private sector, dedicated PQC lines are built for entertainment companies and power plants.

The consortium will apply PQC technology to entertainment companies' dedicated lines to strengthen the security of their intellectual property and creative works. They plan to develop a PQC-based authentication platform and utilize it for concert ticket reservations and authentication, thereby expanding PQC technology to the B2C sector.

GS EPS plans to establish a PQC line between its Dangjin and Seoul offices, power generation facilities requiring high security, to proactively prevent large-scale power outages caused by cyberattacks. Security will also be enhanced by developing a facial recognition access system utilizing PQC technology.

LG Uplus is expanding the scope of PQC applications through the government's New Deal initiatives. Following its application to optical communication equipment (ROADM) and USB-type security tokens (Q-PUF USB), which can be used in small devices, LG Uplus is expanding its scope to include other applications. The strategy is to create a full-layer security system that will remain effective even in the era of quantum computing.

The consortium recently received testing and verification from the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) for the PQC dedicated lines it built in the industrial and medical fields, proving their effectiveness.