The South Korea Government planned to increase the penetration rate of LED lighting applications to 60% in two stages. This plan was announced in “2060 LED lighting plan” in June of 2011. This is another developing plan for LED lighting industry after “LED lighting 15/30 universal plans”, the initial object of which is 30% penetration rate in 2015. In accordance with the research report of Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), the penetration rate of LED lighting products in Korea is only 2.5%.
In order to accelerate the popularization of LED lights lamps domestically, the Korea Government not only published the explicit process of popularization of LED lighting industry, but also established the public market to stimulate the demand of LED lamps. They did a lot of work in this area, especially in the promotion of policies and mechanisms. The Korea Government had a great deal of experience in this part: Firstly, they stimulated the demand; Then they focused on the application ability of enterprises; Finally, they laid stress on sustainable development and set up four centers to integrate industrial development, such like agriculture, automobile industry, etc.. In addition, the Korea Government continued to promote the “industrial giant” strategy, providing sufficient fund to competitive enterprises in LED lighting industry through the co-operation with banks. This made large enterprise groups become not only the main body of production and operation, the backbone of foreign trade, but also the core strength of capital introduction, information collection and technology development. The Korea Government mostly would concentrate on drive the market through applications. In the early stage of high-tech industry, the Korea Government usually took the domestic market as the test field. It is an essential point for domestic high-tech products to enter the international market.
In “2060 LED lighting plan”, South Korea put forward the object of “been one of the top three market of LED lighting industry” and become the top one market by 2020. In one hand, the government and competitive enterprises are co-operating to promote LED products domestically. On the other hand, it is actually the medium and small sized companies that constituted the main force of their lighting industry. Under the circumstance of lacking of competitive technologies, these companies planned to pay more attention on the research and development of LED core technologies and applications. Currently, there are more than 890 companies that undertake LED lighting business in Korea.