While North Korea apparently wants to send nuclear bombs our way, their Southern neighbor has much more noble intentions. They'd like to ship over clothing that has built-in MP3 players. They plan to launch the digital apparel by the end of the year, and hope to be able to export it to other countries, like the US.

Of course, we have already adjusted some apparel to fit the tech-savvy consumers, like the Nike+ iPod shoes, but efforts to create clothes with the MP3 player built in have gone unnoticed and generally unwanted.
South Korea thinks it'll be the next big thing, though. "The research and development of smart clothing can't be left up to the market only, because of its high risk. The government has taken the role of offsetting this risk," Hwang Kyu-yearn, an official at the Commerce and Industry Ministry, said Wednesday

The shirts would have to be stripped of most electronic gadgetry before being washed, sort of making the whole "built-in" thing underwhelming. However, estimates are that the digital clothing market could be a $7 billion industry by the year 2014. If South Korea gets an early start on it now, they could own the lion's share of that when the industry matures.

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Report Published by: Mark Raby