Both ISO 21001 and ISO 9001 are standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for quality management systems. However, while ISO 9001 focuses on the general requirements for Quality Management Systems (QMS), ISO 21001 is specifically designed for educational institutions. ISO 9001 is a widely recognized standard for QMS applicable to almost industries, including manufacturing and services. It defines the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continuing improvement of QMS to improve customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirements and improving overall performance. Meanwhile, ISO 21001 focuses specifically on educational institutions and is designed to develop and improve the curriculum efficiency by meeting trainees needs. It provides a system in which educational institutions can build, implement, maintain, and continuously improve the Education Management System (EMS) for the purpose of improving the satisfaction of trainees and other stakeholders. ISO 21001 covers a wide range of educational organizations, including schools, universities, and education providers. KINAC/INSA, the Center of Excellence in Korea, is an educational institution in the field of nuclear control. So It has been developed and operated various international and domestic curriculum. KINAC/INSA obtained ISO 9001 certification in November 2016 and has been certified so far. However, in the scope of ISO 9001 certification, curriculum development process is not included so KINAC/ INSA needs to obtain additional ISO certification specialized in education to improve the education quality. That is why KINAC/INSA is developing the ISO 21001 system, and aims to acquire certification in November 2023. This paper explains the necessity for educational institutions to obtain ISO 21001 in comparison with ISO 9001. It also introduces the process of developing ISO 21001 system of KINAC/INSA. By implementing EMS based on ISO 21001, KINAC/INSA can expect to improve the educational satisfaction of trainees and other stakeholders through effective curriculum development and educational operation.

The global nuclear nonproliferation regime has developed over the past 50 years based on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) with three pillars: disarmament, nonproliferation and peaceful use of nuclear energy. Due to climate change and energy security in recent years, nuclear energy has been in the spotlight as an electricity generation source, and many countries are paying attention to introducing nuclear power plants (NPP). Whereas exporters pursue profit by selling their NPP, international organisations and member states that seek nuclear nonproliferation are concerned with potential proliferation risks by expanding the nuclear power industry worldwide. Simultaneously, the member states’ right to peaceful use of nuclear energy has to be guaranteed as specified in NPT Article IV. Accordingly, the trade of nuclear power between the member states taking full responsibility is desirable from the nonproliferation perspective. This paper investigates whether the countries capable of exporting their nuclear power have complied with the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, deriving the role and position that South Korea is faced with, accordingly, has to take. The dynamics of exporters’ competitiveness are discussed, emphasising that compliance with the regime must be considered a qualification when exporting NPP. The achievement that South Korea has attained, fulfilling its role and responsibility under the regime, is highlighted. Since South Korea has developed the nuclear power industry in cooperation with the United States under the NPT and the ROK-US Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation, the status quo of the two countries in the nuclear nonproliferation and industrial landscape is discussed. Among the newcomers who have officially announced the plan to introduce NPP, Saudi Arabia is put in a crucial position to aggregate or alleviate nuclear nonproliferation. To this end, the rationale for the ROK-US cooperation is proposed, evaluating the value of nuclear nonproliferation in support of exporting nuclear power.

Korea Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control (KINAC) remains dedicated to providing national and international training to train the workforce in the area of nuclear nonproliferation and security. INSA has also provided a number of nuclear nonproliferation courses for the public such as middle or high school students and teachers, senior government officials, NGOs in the field of nuclear energy, and so on. The recent trend calls for education with high field applicability. Additionally, as interest in nuclear nonproliferation has recently increased, the demand of the public for education is expected to be increased. However, since it is difficult for the public to access nuclear facilities, it is not easy to understand regulatory activities at nuclear facilities. Therefore, KINAC has developed Virtual Reality (VR) content to enhance the public’s understanding of nuclear facilities and on-site inspection activities of KINAC. VR technology is expected to be a new means that can enable the public to access nuclear facilities in spite of some “VR dizziness” usually called “Human Factor”. This paper introduces the composition and function of KINAC’s nuclear nonproliferation VR content for Hanaro Rx in nuclear nonproliferation courses for the public and seeks ways to optimize it based on a one-year operation experience.

This paper presents a strategic adoption model for blockchain technology in nuclear nonproliferation by analysing the implementation of legally binding agreements and leveraging results from governmentleading sectors. Blockchain has been emerging as not only a single promising technology but a foundational one which can be combined with diverse sectors. From the national point of view, it is imperative that the government formulates policy for fostering blockchain-related industries, thereby, gaining a competitive advantage at the national level. Accordingly, the Korean government has established the Blockchain Technology Development and Diffusion Strategies in 2018 and 2020, respectively, to verify the technology by supporting pilot projects for apposite industries, such as customs clearance, transhipment of containers, record-keeping of meat processing, and smart contracts. In addition, the strategies announce to support liaison with regulatory sandbox and cooperation between the projects. Internationally, on the other hand, nuclear nonproliferation imposes the duties of verifying that member states under the NPT and the Safeguards Agreement obey the IAEA mandate, “Atoms for Peace and Development”. Similarly, bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements and administrative arrangements specify reporting obligations for the origin and history records of the Trigger List items. Meanwhile, commercial and industrial secrets and other confidential information of any entities involved have to be securely protected. Provided accompanying activities accomplish the integrity of records and mutual transparency, it brings more credibility, and further, the competitiveness of the state’s nuclear industry. In conclusion, the tasks that the Republic of Korea implements as an exemplary country complying with the nuclear nonproliferation regime have many similarities with the pilot projects that have been or are being carried out under national strategies for fostering blockchain technology elsewhere. This implies that the leveraging of the subsets can derive a new competitive model in blockchain adoption that contributes to the competitiveness of the national nuclear industry due to the advanced nuclear regulations.

With the enhancement of the spatial resolution of satellite imagery (1 m or less), the satellite image analysis has been considered as the indispensable means for remote sensing of nuclear proliferation activities in the restricted access areas such as North Korea. Notably, in the case of an open-pit uranium mine, e.g. the Pyongsan uranium mine, the mining activity can be presumed if detecting the location and extent uranium tailing piles near shafts within temporal images. Several studies have researched on the target detection for minerals of interest such as limestone and coal to evaluate the economic activities by utilizing similarity measures, e.g., a spectral angle mapper and a spectral information divergence (SID). Thus, this paper presented a systematic change detection methodology for monitoring the uranium mining activity in the Pyongsan uranium mine with a similarity measure of SID. The proposed methodology using the target detection results consists of the following five steps. The first step is to acquire stereo images of areas of interest for change detection. The second step is to preprocess the stereo images as following measures: (i) the QUick Atmospheric Correction and the image-to-image registration with ENVI and (ii) the Gram-Schmidt pansharpening. The third step is to extract spectral information for minerals of interest, i.e., uranium tailing piles, by sampling pixels within the reference image. It is based on the satellite analysis report for the Pyongsan uranium mine by CSIS, which specified the location of the uranium tailing piles. As the fourth step, the target detection for uranium tailing piles was performed through the similarity measure of SID between the extracted spectral information and the spectral reflectance of the image. In the fifth step, the change detection was processed using the multivariate alteration detection algorithm, which compares the target detection results by canonical correlation analysis. Furthermore, this paper evaluated the performance of the proposed methodology with the change detection accuracy assessment index, i.e., the area under a receiver operating characteristic curve. In conclusion, this paper suggests the systematic change detection methodology utilizing time series analysis of target detection for uranium tailing piles, which can save time and cost for humans to interpret large amounts of satellite information at the restricted access areas. As future works, the feasibility of the proposed methodology would be investigated by analyzing distribution of minerals of interest regarding nuclear proliferation at Yongbyon, which has the historical events of suspicious nuclear activities.