In 2011, the Korean Society for Precision Engineers (KSPE) headed by the President Seung-Woo Kim from KAIST, launched a new division of KSPE called Green Manufacturing Technology for the development of green manufacturing related technologies. Professor Sung-Hoon Ahn from Seoul National University (SNU) was appointed as the founding president of this new division and has held this position from 2011 to 2014.

As the first international activity of the division, Professor Ahn with a group of Professors from SNU and Green Manufacturing Technology division launched the International Symposium on Green Manufacturing and Applications (ISGMA) in 2011 with the first symposium having been held within SNU. Professor Chong-Nam Chu (SNU) chaired the symposium, and Professor Jongwon Kim (SNU, President of IAMD), Professor Sung-Hoon Ahn (SNU, President of KSPE Green Manufacturing Division), Fritz Prinz(Stanford University), David Dornfeld (UC Berkeley), and Ichiro Inasaki (Chubu University, Japan, President of MIRAI) were appointed as Co-chairs.

The following ISGMA conferences were held in Jeju Island, Korea (2012), Hawaii, USA (2013), Busan, Korea (2014), Qingdao, China (2015), Bali, Indonesia (2016) and Gyeongju, Korea(2017). The largest number of participants at the conference was recorded at Hawaii in 2013 with over 600 participants from 20 countries.

In 2018, ISGMA will be renamed to PRESM(International Symposium of Precision Engineering and Sustainable Manufacturing) and held in Sapporo, Japan. Sapporo is the fourth largest city in Japan and known for host of 1972 Winter Olympics (first in Asia) and Sapporo Snow Festival.

Based on the growing activity of ISGMA and green manufacturing technology, KSPE launched a new journal entitled 'International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing - Green Technology' (IJPEM-GT) in January 2014. From its very first issue, IJPEM-GT has been indexed