Coming Soon: MP3-Equipped Clothing

Clothing equipped with an MP3 option will be released on the market at the end of this year.

In addition, sporting attire that will keep one’s optimum body heat in accordance with the outside temperature and children underwear designed to prevent missing child incidents will be commercially available after next year.

The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE) announced yesterday that smart wear line complete with MP3 will be on sale for the first time in the country at the end of this year, thanks to its development in the “daily smart wear for the future” that started in August 2004.

At present, only three companies including the U.S.’ Burton has commercialized clothing equipped with MP3 features. If Korean clothing of this kind is released as planned at the end of this year, it will be one of the first five of its kind on the market.

Smart wear featuring MP3 option released by Korean smaller firms, Beaucre Merchandising and FCG, will enable a person to listen to music through earphones on the collar once the person plays MP3 using a textile button attached to the sleeves.

Textile signal line and button woven into the clothing make smart wear different from clothing merely equipped with an MP3 player and earphones and is washable once they are removed.

It is expected that the selling price will be in the range of 200,000 to 600,000 won, similar to that of foreign smart wear. This price doesn’t include the cost of the MP3 player.

Besides, another line of smart wear with other functions is in development.

These smart wear lines include outdoor sporting wear that automatically diffuses heat after measuring the outside environment such as temperature, humidity, and ultraviolet light and one’s body condition such as temperature; healthcare clothing that measures one’s bio signal while working out in real time and then transmitting it to a fitness server; dressy clothing which responds to sound, lighting and displaying different kinds of color; and children underwear designed to prevent children from go missing with the function in which if a color button on the clothing is pressed, the contact address of a child’s parents is sent to the mobile phone.

It is expected that the smart wear market worldwide will grow to $7 billion in 2014 from $200 million of 2008.