In 2006, South Korea announced a plan for popularizing LED city lighting “15/30 (the penetration LED lighting applications in Seoul should reach 30% by 2015)”. This project will be start with traffic lights, outdoor displays and billboards, replacing traditional incandescent lamps with LED lighting technology. Therefore, a large number of companies considered this as a good opportunity to expand their business and swarmed into this emerging market.
But the truth is LED lights were not widely promoted as expected. Through large-scale investments from several electronics giants, South Korea’s upstream LED chip industry grew rapidly and became the second largest provider in the world in a short term. In the field of downstream LED application manufacturing industry, in addition to large makers, small and medium sized LED companies also showed a positive response to exploit the international market. But too many enterprises have involved into this business, plus the continuous dropping of unit price, making these companies entered a difficult period in advance.
What is worse is that the stagnated pace of the popularity of the Korean LED lighting industry. in 2010, the total occupation of LED products among all lighting technologies is around 2.5%, this value only grew by 1.5% by the end of 2011 (6% in Seoul). The government worked to support these enterprises by implementing a couple of LED city lighting projects. However, in order to realize the object of “15/30” plan, from 2012, the popularity of LED lights should be at a rate of 6.5% per year. For now, it is difficult for the South Korean Government to achieve the target.
The constant low level of domestic LED penetration will undoubtedly impact negative influences on their international market plans. More and more Korean enterprises will lose their competitiveness in overseas markets. Accordingly, the government, local government of Seoul City and the LED industry group Korea LED Association (KLEDA) stood in their respective positions, introducing measures for further promotion of LED lamps. In order to head the call, Seoul local government began local led tunnel light city lighting projects from themselves, using LED lamps in their new government buildings: the external glass can change the building appearance through its internal mounted LED lamps (dimming and color mixing).