Korean Representatives Successively Enter Chair of International Conference to Decide 5G Standard Bands
Dr. Wi Gyu-jin and Dr. Kim Kyung-mi elected as Chair of the APG-19 General Assembly and Chair of WP2, respectively.

The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning announced that at the 1st APG-19 General Assembly held in Chengdu, China from July 26 to 28, Dr. Wi Gyu-jin of the Korea Information and Communications Technology Association (TTA) was elected as the 'Chair of the APG-19 General Assembly,' and Kim Kyung-mi, Head of the Technical Standards Division at the National Radio Research Institute (RRA), was elected as the 'Chair of WP2 (Mobile Communications Working Group).'

The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) is the highest decision-making body where government and private sector officials from around the world gather every four years to decide on major matters in the radio field, such as international frequency allocation, global mobile communication frequency designation, and standards for preventing interference between countries. APG-19 is a preparatory body for the Asia-Pacific region to coordinate and form common opinions among Asia-Pacific countries in order to reflect the position and interests of the Asia-Pacific region as much as possible in WRC-19 (2019, Geneva, Switzerland).


The attention of countries around the world is focused on the standardization of 5G mobile communication. Samsung Electronics announced that it proposed a vision for the direction 5G mobile communication should take and next-generation mobile communication technologies at the 3GPP RAN '5G Workshop' held in Phoenix, USA, last September.

The Asia-Pacific WRC preparatory body includes a total of 38 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Korea, China, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand.

Considering that, unlike in the past when a few major powers effectively dominated the WRC, the influence of the APG Chairperson has been increasing recently—such as by granting significant regional representation to the chairpersons of preparatory meetings of regional organizations (6 in total), the election of Korea to the APG leadership is evaluated as having laid a good foundation for actively reflecting Korea's opinions in WRC-19.

The regional organizations of the WRC include APT (Asia-Pacific), CEPT (Europe), CITEL (Americas), ASMG (Middle East), ATU (Africa), and RCC (Commonwealth of Independent States).

In particular, the simultaneous election of domestic experts as the chair of the APG-19 General Assembly and the chair of the Working Group (WP2) that discusses the details professionally at the WRC-19, which determines 5G standard bands, is expected to be significantly advantageous in reflecting domestic 5G preferred bands as international standard bands.

The newly elected APG-19 leadership (chair, vice-chairs (2), chairpersons of 6 working groups, etc.) will lead the meetings until the WRC-19 is held, and will hold a total of 5 meetings by 2019, with the 4th meeting ('18) scheduled to be held in Korea.