KAIST Professor Moon Soong-Chun (photo) received the honorary Green Stripes Award, the Order of Service Merit from the President of the Republic of Korea, Moon Jae-In in February 28th.

Professor Moon, the first PhD in computer science in Korea, had many outstanding achievements in the training junior scholars in the IT field. He educated 30 PhDs during his academic career. He also wrote 21 books including the first Korean computer textbooks. In addition to his academic contributions, he has been actively engaged in humanitarian activities. Over the past two decades, for instance, he has put in a great deal of effort to build the IT infrastructure in the developing countries including UNDP experts and ambassadors of the International Red Cross.

As an expert in distributed information processing, he developed world fifth’s blockchain level software 26 years ago. In the field of information security, which is his minor, he contributed to the overhaul of the bill on the resident registration system by constantly raising the seriousness of the problem of the resident registration system being vulnerable to the first step of hacking.

He served as a professor for 41 years, including 33 years at KAIST and 8 years at Soongsil University and has published over 200 papers. As a representative of the Committee of Asia at the American Computer Association and European Computer Association, he has worked extensively in promoting Korea’s status as an IT powerhouse. His outstanding achievements were recognized by the government through the award.