Refrigeration Home Appliances, Key 'Well-Being' Players for Kitchen


The 'Well-Being' wind is blowing strongly also in home kitchens. Consumers' product-selection criteria emphasize the aspects of health and affluent life more than design or function as had been the case in the past. Keeping pace with this trend are patent applications for multi-function and high-quality Kimchi refrigerators and water purifiers.

Since its debut in the market in the latter half of the 1990s, the Kimchi refrigerator has become an indispensable and common electric kitchen appliance and is expanding its reach rapidly together with cold-and-hot water purifiers.

- Patent applications for Kimchi refrigerators, which numbered only two in 1992, jumped to 211 in 2003, comprising more than 20% of total refrigerator-related applications.
- Those for cold-and-hot water purifiers, which were 97 in 1999, also increased steadily annually to over 2,000 from 2002.

As the range of Kimchi refrigerators and water purifiers in the domestic electric kitchen appliance market is growing, fierce competition is occurring among the traditional big-three refrigeration home appliance firms, while some medium-size firms with strong technological prowess also are emerging as dark horses.

- Winnia Mando advanced into the Kimchi refrigerator market in full scale starting in 2001. As a result of its strenuous efforts to increase patent applications in this field, Mando is converting into a firm that can compete with Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

- Chungho Nais also has filed a patent application for cold-and-hot water purifiers equipped with ice-making function for the first time in the world.