Every weekend, Gyeongbokgung Palace bustles with tourists from around the world dressed in colorful hanbok. The sight of foreigners enthralled by K-pop and K-dramas, their arms full of Korean cosmetics, is both astonishing and moving.
Venturing past the crowds into the inner grounds, one encounters Geoncheonggung, known as "the palace within the palace." Though not widely known, this is the starting point of Korea's electric power industry — the birthplace of K-electricity. In 1887, just eight years after Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, Korea's first electric lamp was lit here. It was a cutting-edge technological revolution of its time, ahead of even the royal courts of Japan and China.
The electric lamp at Geoncheonggung became the seed of modernization, leading to the founding of Hansung Electric Company (the predecessor of Korea Electric Power Corp.) in 1898 and the launch of Korea Electric Power Corp. in 1961. KEPCO went on to usher in a full-fledged nuclear era with the operation of the Kori No. 1 reactor, built Asia's first ultra-high-voltage transmission network, and completed a 32-year project to upgrade household voltage to 220V — fulfilling its responsibility to deliver a stable power supply.
Thanks to these efforts, the quality of Korea's electricity has reached world-class levels. The annual outage time per household is about 9 minutes, far shorter than that of the United States (125 minutes) or the United Kingdom (38 minutes). The frequency of outages is just 0.11 times per year, meaning a child might experience only one blackout, if any, during the nine years from entering elementary school to graduating from middle school. The transmission and distribution loss rate (3.53%) is also markedly lower than in advanced economies such as the U.K. (9.47%) and Germany (13.61%). Behind this remarkable record lies the sense of mission and dedication of 230,000 power workers (cumulative) who have quietly safeguarded the grid year-round amid extreme weather and disasters such as typhoons, heat waves, and wildfires.
This superior electricity quality has faithfully supported the compressed growth of Korea's key industries, including shipbuilding, steel, and automobiles. In particular, Korea's semiconductor industry — globally the most competitive — has been made possible by a stable power supply. In ultra-precision processes at the nanometer scale, even a 0.1-second outage can cause massive losses across months of production.
K-electricity is also expanding its stage to the world. Starting with a thermal power plant project in the Philippines in 1995 and extending to the UAE nuclear power plant, KEPCO is currently undertaking 31 projects in a total of 12 countries. Cumulative revenue generated in the global market has reached as much as 51 trillion won.
That is not the end. As the artificial intelligence (AI) industry grows explosively, the value of electricity is being completely transformed. Whereas electricity in the past was "infrastructure" supporting industrial growth, future electricity is a "core strategic asset" that will determine national supremacy. Amid the energy transition and the explosive growth of the AI industry, the power industry is certain to expand rapidly to astronomical proportions. In fact, Bloomberg has forecast that a staggering $213 trillion will be invested cumulatively in the global energy market through 2050. To stay one step ahead of other nations, we must read this enormous change accurately and seize the opportunities ahead.
We have at our disposal proprietary new energy technologies, including the Intelligent Digital Power Plant (IDPP), the Substation Equipment Diagnosis & Analysis solution (SEDA), and the Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS). Now is the time to combine our outstanding technologies with private capital, lead innovation in the energy ecosystem, and produce tangible results. If the lamp that illuminated Geoncheonggung 139 years ago underpinned Korea's dramatic growth, KEPCO's new energy technologies will drive innovative leaps forward in the coming AI era.
