Korea put RFID into life

You can refuel at the station without the help of the service staff, without needing to know the type of gasoline you are using, as well as without needing to pay the purse. All you need is a special credit card and a chip attached to the car.

This is an application of automatic identification technology called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which has been piloted by S-Oil at a petroleum supply station in Seoul. S-Oil is the first oil refinery in Korea to deploy RFID at a gas pump station.

The automatic identification system uses a specialized device called an RFID tag to store and retrieve data. Using radio waves, cards can be attached to products, animals or worn on people for identification purposes. Some types of cards are readable (data) even if the person or object is standing a few meters away or not near the RFID reader. Most RFID tags consist of two parts, one is an integrated circuit chip used to store and process information simultaneously to modulate the signal, and the other is an antenna for receiving and transmitting signals. There are more advanced cards without chips, allowing data to be accessed directly to a variety of devices at a low cost.

S-Oil's RFID service includes 3 systems: wireless payment - bonus point accumulation, customer management and gasoline upside-down alarms. Through a guest car-mounted device, the wireless payment system and reward points automatically read information about customers as well as the type of vehicle they are driving, and supports non-cash payment features and accumulate bonus points. The customer management system provides services that meet the unique needs of each person, while the gas alarm system will prevent improper injection of gasoline into customers' cars.

Gasoline customers pay by entering a password for the credit card at the first gas station in Korea that provides RFID services.(Photo: Kim Hyun-cheol)

RFID is also about to be present in a completely different field. The Korean Postal Service is deploying the application of this technology in the classification and tracking of correspondence. 600 RFID readers and 40,000 RFID tags have been delivered to parcels and parcel shipping centers throughout Korea. Concerning the application of RFID in the post office industry, Finland is testing the speed and accuracy tracking system in the process of mail distribution using the integrated RFID tag envelope.

RFID, which is considered a step forward in bar code technology, crept into not only a lot of areas of life but also the bureaucracy in Korea. Busan city is considering using this technology to track vehicles through an RFID chip attached to the car. Gyeonggi Province is also implementing a similar system, and is about to use RFID application management system in October. Meanwhile, the Korean Ministry of Justice is drafting regulations to force people with pedophilia to wear rings with RFID chips to track their whereabouts.

Concerns about food hygiene and safety, especially controversy over the importation of American beef, made Kim Chi's public interest especially in tracking the origins of pets through barcodes and cards. electronic. In August, Korea's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry will deploy a system to monitor all seafood by RFID. Especially from December this year, all cattle raised in South Korea are required to wear RFID tags containing information about them in their ears. Animals that do not carry cards will be destroyed.

Later this year, all cattle in Korea will be wearing RFID tags.(Photo: Kim Hyun-cheol)

However, the current application of RFID to life has been controversial, even many consumer privacy organizations have boycotted RFID-labeled goods. The reason is that the owner of the RFID tagging device may not know the data in the card can be read remotely. In fact there is a case where sensitive information of individuals is retrieved without the consent of that person. Most worried about whether the RFID tag attached to the product is still active even when the item has been purchased and brought home, so they can be exploited by bad guys to track customer activity or service. the goals are not pure.