On August 17, 2014, the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) signed an agreement concerning the operations and development of ALMA. With this agreement, Korea officially joined in the East Asia ALMA consortium whose current members are Japan and Taiwan.

Japan and Korea have promoted active collaboration in the field of astronomy. In 2001, the two countries made a successful VLBI observation for the first time by linking the 45-m radio telescope of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) of the National Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the 14-m radio telescope of the Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory of Korea. The following year, NAOJ and KASI officially signed an agreement to further strengthen the collaboration. And a decade later, in March 2012, NAOJ and KASI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concerning the collaboration of ALMA. (Reference: ALMA Photo Diary, NAOJ and KASI Sign ALMA Collaboration MoU)

This agreement enables Korea’s participation into the ALMA project as well as their contribution to the operations of ALMA and development of new instruments. It is expected that this agreement will enhance the cooperation of two countries in astronomy and greatly promote the diversity and innovativeness of East Asian astronomical researches.

The picture shows the attendees of the signing ceremony (from left): Chul-Sung Choi (Director of Space Science Division, KASI), Jongsoo Kim (Director of Radio Astronomy Division, KASI), Youngdeuk Park (Vice President of KASI), Katsuhiko Sato (President of NINS), Inwoo Han (President of KASI), Masahiko Hayashi (Director General of NAOJ), Hideyuki Kobayashi (Deputy Director of NAOJ), Satoru Iguchi (East Asia ALMA Project Manager, NAOJ).