A senior executive with leading Korean mobile operator SK Telecom says that every smartphone it sells in the future will be NFC capable. The operator’s VP of global strategic partnerships Yu-Shik Kim (pictured) told NFC World that NFC is one of its “top priorities” and that insisting on the technology’s presence in smartphones would drive adoption.  The same executive previously demonstrated SK Telecom’s commitment to NFC technology at the GSMA Mobile Money Summit at the end of June in which he announced that the operator plans to launch a NFC Zone in Seoul with leading merchants in the second half of this year.

The most recent comments by SK Telecom follow the Korean government’s announcement in June that it would require vendors to add contactless payment support to every new smartphone. At that time just two NFC-enabled devices had been launched in the Korean market. The same government plan envisages 300,000 payment terminals being installed or upgraded in locations such as stores or transport hubs.

Yu-Shik Kim said that Koreans change their handset every two years on average, on which basis two thirds of SK Telecom’s 26 million subscribers will have a NFC-enabled smartphone by 2013. The operator currently has two million subscribers for its current mobile wallet service.