Korea To Build Precision Time and Frequency Network To Reduce Reliance On GPS

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November 7, 2026

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Written by Editor

Image: Atomic clock, UK NPL

What’s new: South Korea is completing its resilient PNT triad with a coherent fiber-based national timing network.

Why it’s important:

Time and timing underlies virtually every technology and optical fiber-based time is very difficult to disrupt. According to the article, the government is going to ensure connections to critical infrastructure. This makes sense as a matter of national security.
This project will complete what we call the “Resilient PNT Triad” for S. Korea. They will have signals from space (GPS & KPS), terrestrial broadcast (eLoran), and fiber (the system described in the article)

What else to know:

The commander of US forces in Korea recently called the peninsula one of the most “violently contested electromagnetic environments on the planet”.
South Korea’s Korean Positioning System (KPS) is a regional satnav of 8 satellites.
From the article:

In a situation where national core infrastructures such as communications, finance, and power that operate according to standard time are becoming increasingly important, academia views that a time supply network is needed to complement GPS (the U.S. satellite navigation system), which is vulnerable to radio interference.

Korea to build precision time and frequency network to reduce reliance on GPS

By Geonhee Park

UpdatedOct 29, 2026,5:20 p.m. KSTP

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) and Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information(KISTI) will collaborate to build a Korean-style time and frequency transmission network based on the national standard time.

KRISS announced that it held the ‘Time-Net Korea 2026’ workshop together with KISTI at the Korea Science and Technology Center in Seoul on the 29th.

At this workshop, participants discussed methods for supplying time to complement satellite navigation systems such as optical communication networks, geostationary satellites, and terrestrial broadcasting. The core agenda was the ‘Time-Net Korea’ plan to directly transmit national standard time through domestic optical communication networks.

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What Can YOU Do? How Can YOU Help?

PNT is the quiet backbone of everything but too many leaders still don't see the risk.

But you do. You understand the systems, the dependencies, the failure chains. That insight is rare — and it's exactly what your country needs right now. Contact your government leaders and industry decision-makers and tell them resilient PNT isn't a feature — it's the foundation everything else depends on.

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