In today’s world, people spend quite a huge chunk of their days staring at screens. Some 3.8 billion people in the world use smartphones to search the internet, watch movies and take photos. Nearly half of global households have computers and televisions, according to IHS Markit and the International Telecommunication Union.

“Can you imagine the world without displays?” said Jang Jin, a professor at Kyung Hee University’s department of information display, in an interview with The Korea Herald.

Displays, a key medium to deliver information, have been a ubiquitous part of everyday lives, evolving to become lighter, sleeker and more interactive with more vivid colors. Displays have been transformed from thick, black-and-white cathode-ray-tube, or CRT, to today’s flexible and transparent organic light-emitting diode, or OLED.

“Displays will further evolve to change our lives in a more fundamental ways in diverse areas including automobiles, home appliances and fashion industries,” said Jang, often referred to as the “display guru” in the industry.

Jang is a world-known display scholar, who has released more than 500 relevant theses. 

He presented flexible and transparent OLED technologies for the first time in the world at a symposium held by the world’s most prestigious display association, the Society for Information Display, 15 years ago.

According to the professor, the advances in flexible and transparent OLED technologies are applied to automobiles’ infotainment, smart refrigerators’ touchscreen for managing groceries and wearable devices like smartwatches or fitness trackers, just to name a few.

“The flexible display market will evolve into bendable, foldable, rollable displays -- and stretchable in the coming years,” he said.

According to IHS Markit, the flexible display market is expected to rise to $15.7 billion in 2020 from $5.3 billion this year.

Two Korean leading display makers, Samsung and LG, have competitively unveiled their stretchable displays, which are the most advanced form of flexible displays, at symposiums held by the SID in recent years.

The display expert said displays in the future will further evolve by being integrated with other technologies such as chip or software.

“When integrated with chips, a display panel inserted into a handbag could make a sound if it is stolen. When integrated with software, smartphone screens can show users ingredients and the country of origin when they take photos of food,” he said.

Local display makers and colleges are currently researching how to integrate flexible displays into other industries.

Beyond flexible panels, displays will further evolve into holograms, which currently can only be seen in science-fiction movies like “Mission Impossible,” he said.

“Hologram display technologies can be realized in two to three decades. The world has made impossible things possible so far,” Jang said.

A hologram is a photographic recording of a light field, rather than of an image formed by a lens, and it is used to display a fully 3-D image of a “holographed” subject, which is seen without the aid of special glasses or other intermediate optics.

In Korea, there are more than 300 patents mostly filed by Samsung, LG and state-run organizations, including the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and Korea Electronics Technology Institute.

Korea has been leading the global display industry over the past two decades, beating former dominant player Japan. Until the late 1990s, Japanese companies led the TV industry for around 40 years with the demonstration of the first CRT TVs.

However, when TV screens moved from CRT and plasma display panels to the more advanced liquid crystal displays, Japanese companies had shown passive investments in the early 2000s.

Samsung and LG’s pre-emptive investments into LCD and OLED displays in the following years have allowed them to lead the global display industry. Korean companies have retained the largest market share in the global display market since 2003 in the combined areas of LCD, PDP and OLED, according to the Korea Display Industry Association.

“Korea will lead the display industry over the next decade with its advanced OLED technologies, although the LCD panel market will soon be dominated by rising Chinese companies,” Jang said.

Currently, Samsung Display has a more than 95 percent share in the global OLED market for smartphones and LG Display has a similar share in the global OLED market for TVs.

Jang has also contributed to the development of the nation’s display industry in academia, establishing the world’s first display college for graduates and bachelor degrees.

Led by Jang, Kyung Hee University opened a graduate school of display college in 1997 and a display college for bachelors in 2004 for the first time in the world.

“Two decades ago, I often heard display companies complaining that they lacked manpower in the level of masters and doctorates. That led me to create the display college,” he recalled. He originally studied physics at Seoul National University for his bachelor’s degree and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology for his master’s and doctorate degrees.

When asked about his educational philosophy, he said, “We try to teach our students what they will need to learn in the future industry, passing on professors’ insights.”

Students are also given opportunities to collaborate with companies from Korea, the US and Germany. By participating in projects with the companies, many of the graduates are now working for global firms including Samsung, LG and Apple.

In 2002, the school also created the Advanced Display Research Center with an investment of 7.1 billion won ($6.2 million) from the government as part of improving research and development for next-generation displays.

Last month, Hang received the Ho-Am prize in the area of engineering, a Korean annual award given to people who have made outstanding contributions to the development of science and culture. Jang received the award in engineering for contributing to the nation’s leadership in the advanced display sector.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)