Korea's modern waterworks began with construction of DDukdo water treatment plant in 1908 and has been growing rapidly along with the country’s economic development. As a result, water supply rates have reached 98.5% based on 2013. Despite multilateral efforts for high-quality water supply, such as introduction of advanced water treatment process, expansion of waterworks infrastructure and so on, distrust for drinking tap water has been continuing and domestic consumption rate of tap water is in around 5% level and extremely poor comparing to advanced countries such as the United States(56%), Japan(52%), etc. Recently, the water management has been facing the new phase due to water environmental degradation caused by climate change, aging facilities, etc. Therefore, K-water has converted water management paradigm from the "clean and safe water" to the "healthy water“ and been pushing the Smart Water City(SWC) Pilot Project in order to develop and spread new water supply models for consumers to believe and drink tap water through systematic water quality and quantity management combining ICT in the whole water supply process. The SWC pilot projects in Pa-ju city and Go-ryeong county were an opportunity to check the likelihood of the "smart water management" as the answer to future water management. It is needed to examine the necessity of smart water management introduction and nationwide SWC expansion in order to improve water welfare for people and resolve domestic & foreign water problems.

• 김재복(한국수자원공사) | Jae-Bog Kim Corresponding author