An LG Uplus employee will serve as coach of South Korea's national team in the cloud computing category at the WorldSkills Competition and as an international expert.

LG Uplus said on Wednesday that Bae Joo-hyuk (배주혁), a technical lead with its UCube DAX team, will participate as an international expert in the cloud computing category at the 48th WorldSkills Competition, to be held in Shanghai, China, from Sept. 22 to 27.

The WorldSkills Competition is a skills contest held every 2 years. This year, about 1,400 people, including competitors and international experts, from more than 70 countries and regions will take part.

In the cloud computing category, competitors test their ability to design, build and operate IT infrastructure in a cloud environment within a limited time. It was adopted as an official WorldSkills category in 2019 as cloud use expanded across industries.

National competitors perform different tasks each day over 4 days of competition. The event will feature 17 countries including South Korea, China, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and South Africa.

Bae has served as coach of South Korea's national team in the WorldSkills cloud computing category three times, starting in the 2022 competition through this year. He contributed to South Korea winning its first-ever silver medal in the category at the 2024 competition in Lyon, France.

He also served as chief judge in the cloud computing category at last year's WorldSkills Asia, the first South Korean to do so. The chief judge is the top official in a category, responsible for designing how the competition is run and overseeing overall operations.

South Korea has won the overall title 19 times since first taking part in the WorldSkills Competition in 1967. At the 2024 competition in Lyon, France, it placed second overall after China.

Bae said, "The WorldSkills Competition is a stage where young technical talent from countries around the world compete." He added, "I will support South Korean competitors so they can perform at their best and help make our country's cloud technology competitiveness known to the world."