The Sleep Industry Promotion Center, established by the Korean Testing Certification Institute in Asan, Chungcheongnam-do Province, is emerging as a major testing and validation hub for Korea’s sleep industry.
The Korean sleep industry grew more than sixfold over a decade, from approximately KRW 480 billion in 2011 to approximately KRW 3 trillion in 2021. The global market is also projected to expand from approximately USD 59.8 billion in 2020 to USD 111.9 billion by 2030.
The market is expanding beyond mattresses and bedding into sleep-monitoring devices, wearable technologies, sleep-environment control devices, and digital healthcare. However, the infrastructure needed to objectively verify product safety, performance, and actual sleep-improvement effects remains insufficient.
To address these industrial needs, the Korean Testing Certification Institute invested approximately KRW 24.6 billion between 2020 and 2023 to establish the Center in cooperation with Chungnam Technopark, the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, and Seoul National University Hospital.
Opened in March 2024, the Center supports the entire product development cycle, including testing and evaluation, human-subject validation, usability assessment, clinical research, certification, and overseas market entry.
Its video-based behavioral analysis laboratory measures three-dimensional joint movement and body-pressure distribution while sleep products are in use. This enables objective comparisons of movement, posture changes, and tossing and turning before and after product use.
The sleep validation laboratory measures physiological signals, including respiration and heart rate, to evaluate product safety, effectiveness, and impact on actual sleep quality.
The sleep-environment chamber controls oxygen concentration, temperature, and humidity. The multi-environment chamber uses positive and negative pressure to recreate various real-world conditions. These facilities enable comprehensive verification of how environmental changes affect sleep and product performance.
When a company requests a product evaluation, the Center provides step-by-step support covering test planning, research design, participant selection, examinations, data collection, statistical analysis, and preparation of the final report.
The Center also supports basic performance verification, prototype and reliability evaluations, certification, standardization, and commercialization. It has completed the establishment of a clinical validation research infrastructure and registration as a clinical research organization.
The Center is also pursuing registration as a KOLAS-accredited testing laboratory in the fields of usability and software evaluation.
President Sung-il Ahn of the Korean Testing Certification Institute stated that the Institute would establish a technical support platform for the sleep industry based on its testing, certification, and research experience. He added that the Institute would strengthen companies’ export capabilities by supporting overseas certification based on clinical validation of sleep technologies.
The Sleep Industry Promotion Center aims to become a central hub for Korea’s sleep industry by objectively demonstrating product effectiveness and connecting product improvement with certification, clinical research, and overseas market entry.
