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Buildings are responsible for serious negative environmental impacts caused by their excessive energy and resource consumption, which all contribute to global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. Many governments have thus implemented energy-saving strategies and technologies for both new and existing buildings since buildings have long life spans. Energy efficient building practices can minimize negative environmental impacts and improve economic growth and social prosperity, but although the use of energy efficient methods for new buildings is now widely accepted in South Korea, they are seldom implemented for the renovation of existing buildings. Here we report the development of a highly efficient Energy-efficient Remodeling Framework (ERF) to facilitate the implementation of energy-saving strategies and technologies for existing buildings. It covers every stage of the project, from the initial identification of an energy-efficient building to its eventual Operation and Maintenance (O&M), focusing specifically on appropriate energy-saving strategies and technologies for existing buildings in South Korea. The ERF includes tools for energy-efficient renovation, including ‘E-Scope’, ‘E-Ray’, ‘Impact Tables A&B’, and ‘E-Spectrum’, that have been developed to support energy-efficient remodeling processes in South Korea. The new ERF framework can help government agencies and the construction industry to accelerate the process of expanding the energy efficient remodeling market and reduce energy consumption in the existing building stock and the associated carbon emissions, simultaneously improving the nation's energy security. The ERF will provide a useful national model for creating more energy efficient buildings and guide the creation of an energy-efficient remodeling policy in the Korean context.

With global efforts to strengthen various energy-saving policies for buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in South Korea, new laws and regulations have been in force since May 2015 to install shading devices in public buildings and to include the solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) reduction performance of shading devices in the evaluation of building performance. By making a ventilated air layer outer glass and inner glass to lower the temperatures of the air layer and glass surface, it is possible to reduce the amount of heat flowing into the building while maintaining the same level of light transmission as plain window systems. This study proposes a double-skin façade window with a 20 mm ventilated air cavity, and assumes that insolation inflow indoors would be reduced through ventilation in the air cavity. The artificial solar lab test results show that the SHGC can be lowered through ventilation by 28% to 52.9%. Additionally, in an outdoor test cell experiment, the results show that the mean temperature was 0.6 K and the peak temperature was 0.9 K lower with ventilation in the air cavity than that without ventilation in the air cavity.

In recent years, Korea has been working closely with its counterparts in other jurisdictions to enhance cooperation in the cross-border exchange of information (“EOI”) for tax purposes. In this regard, Korea has implemented, and continues to enter into, bilateral and multilateral legal instruments that are generally consistent with international standards. Bilateral agreements that allow for EOI have been signed with 90 countries to date, and a multilateral treaty has recently come into effect. In addition, Korea has recently simplified the ratification process for implementing EOI-related provisions within its domestic legal instruments. Given the benefits of such EOI mechanisms in combating offshore tax evasion, Korea has proposed that it will increase its efforts to exchange tax-related information with those jurisdictions that do not have any legal instruments in place with Korea. Under the domestic law, information for tax impositions appeals and tax-related criminal prosecutions as well as any other tax information accepted under international practices may be exchanged with partner jurisdictions; provided, however, the exchange of such information should not conflict with other domestic laws. Furthermore, the domestic laws allow for the exchange of financial information from financial institutions. The financial institutions are not granted rights to reject any such request for information regarding financial transations from the competent authorities, which is in line with the international standard that bank secrecy does not form the basis for rejecting requests for the exchange of information. Furthermore, financial institutions that supply financial information to the tax authorities are not required to provide notification of this fact to its account holder prior to supplying this information. Rather, the account holders are notified after the fact, within 10 days after the information has been handed over the tax authorities. Despite this rather wide-ranging ability to collect and exchange information, the tax authorities are required to strictly adhere to confidentiality measures aimed at preventing leakage of taxpayer information.

Eight-level NAND flash memories with 51 nm design rule and 44-cell string floating gate technology have been successfully developed for the first time. 44-cell string with floating poly silicon and tungsten silicide (WSi) gate structure reduced the cell area per bit and improved chip cost efficiency. 44-cell string structure shows acceptable cell current and the results of endurance and interference are quite comparable to the conventional 32-cell string structure.