AbstractThe KMS/SOMMA Meeting 2003 was held 3–6 December 2003 at Spapia Hotel, Daejeon, Korea. It was the 5th SOMMA (International Symposium on Magnetic Materials and Applications) organized by ReCAMM (Research Center for Advanced Magnetic Materials) of Chungnam National University. Since 2002, the Korean Magnetics Society (KMS) winter conference has been jointly held with SOMMA. This was the second time to have a KMS/SOMMA joint meeting.The main objective of the meeting was to provide an international forum to discuss up‐to‐date results on magnetism and magnetic materials. The conference brought together 360 participants from 12 countries. Sessions of the meeting were: Theory and Fundamentals, Magnetic Random Access Memory, Spintronics, Information Storage, Nanostructured Materials, Sensors, and Interdisciplinary. In these seven sessions, 325 papers were presented including 66 oral and 259 poster presentations. Since the symposium was held in Korea, this enabled a large number of Asian scientists to attend: 239 from Korea, 41 from Japan, 7 from Taiwan, and 5 from China.The conference program had 25 invited and plenary speakers. They were Y. Ando (Tohoku U.), M. Inoue (Toyohashi U. Tech), H. Kubota (Tohoku U.), K. Mohri (Nagoya U.), M. Sahashi, M. Takahashi, K. Takanashi, M. Tsunoda (Tohoku U.), and H. Yoda (Toshiba) from Japan; A. J. Freeman (Northwestern U.), A. T. Hanbicki (NRL), F. B. Humphrey (Boston U.), and S. Sun (IBM) from the USA; J. D. Boeck (IMEC, Belgium), B. Dieny (CEA, France), N. Garcia (CSIS, Spain), G. Reiss (Bielefeld U., Germany), T. Stobiecki (U. M. & M. Krakow, Poland), and M. Wolfram (Singulus Tech, Germany) from Europe; C. G. Kim, D. J. Kim (CNU), T. W. Kim (SAIT), S. H. Lim (KIST), Sung‐Chul Shin (KAIST), and Yoon Hee Chung (POSTEC) from Korea.For the first time, the SOMMA Proceedings appear in physica status solidi. The Editors hope that the Proceedings could provide chances for deeper and wider understanding of the presentations as well as for enhanced relationship between all participants. We deeply appreciate the help of the editorial staff of physica status solidi for their efficient and kind help during the paper preparations and publications.Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all members of the Advisory Committee, Organizing Committee, referees, and KMS staff for their effort before, during, and after the meeting.