The Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS) is a government agency which has been leading national and international standards in the Republic of Korea since it was founded in 1883 as Analysis and Testing Laboratory of the Mint Office. After several changes and developments over the last several decades, KATS was reformed under Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. KATS is an active member of ISO, IEC and PASC.

KATS contributes to international standardization with the following objectives:

• to provide technological infrastructure to support Korean enterprises to be recognized internationally by evaluation and certification of technology and quality
• to enforce product safety
• to improve quality of life through standardization.

To achieve the above objectives, KATS undertakes

• to harmonize Korean Industrial Standards (KS) with international standards
• to manage the national legal metrology system
• to accredit testing
• to conduct research for standardization, and
• to endorse international mutual recognition agreements in the fields of standardization and conformity assessment and legal metrology.

KS (Korean Standards) are Korean National Standards developed, reviewed and notified under the Korean Industrial Standardization Act.

KS may be divided into 21 sectors ranging from the Basic standards (A) to the Information (X), as well as it may be classified into 3 types of standards as follows:

• Product Standards: Specifying improvement, measurement and quality of product
• Procedure Standards: Specifying testing, analysis, inspection, measurement method and process standard, etc.
• Horizontal Standards: Specifying terminology, technical characteristics, unit and numerical progression, etc.