The writer is professor of the School of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Seoul National University -- Ed. What differentiates the International Meeting on Information Display (IMID) from other academic circles, where professors or special scholars took the initiative in forming such bodies, is that in the case of IMID it was industrial circles that took the initiative directly to establish IMID. At that time when IMID was launched in June 1999, Korea was in the vanguard, holding sway with an unshakable No.1 position in the global display industry. Hence, the first members thought that this conference should be a more substantial conference than the U.S.-led Society for Information Display (SID) or Japan's International Display Workshop (IDW) and started overseas publicity proactively so that it could grow into an international conference. By expanding every year by an average 20%, IMID soon caught up with Japan's IDW considering its scale alone, and it is still growing on a similar scale to SID, holding 600~650 booths at present. In actual fact, display companies all over the world today can find new export markets by just exhibiting in the United States. In that regard, it is very important to attract enough display companies to Korea's conference together with foreign buyers and experts in the display industry. Displays and semiconductors are symbolic products that represent Korea. However, as Taiwan takes the lead in terms of LCD panel exports, overtaking Korea now, many people are concerned about this development, realizing also that in the future it is China that will become an even bigger threat to us. Provided China launches their project with the support of the government, the growth could be extremely quick and potent. Compared with China's fearful vigor, Korea's display industry is a little unstable in terms of collaboration between larger companies and smaller companies. In order for Korea's display industry to develop, parts must be localized to the maximum. In that sense, joint research between panel manufacturers and equipment, parts, and smaller companies' manufacturing material must be accomplished organically well. The most important task for us today is to lower the unit cost of production possibly by developing the core technology, pursuing parts' localization, and transferring assembly factories overseas as larger companies and smaller companies cooperate with each other. This is the road to recover Korea display's pride, taken away to Taiwan, and to restrain China that is running hot on our heels.