South Korea bets big on AI for all

There can be few government evangelists for artificial intelligence as enthusiastic as South Korean deputy prime minister Bae Kyung-hoon, a former researcher who has published a book promoting the technology and presides over lavishly funded programmes intended to make it ubiquitous.

Leading AI developers may worry the technology could threaten the survival of humanity, but Bae, who is also minister for science and information technology, sees it as the key to a “good future”.

AI should be considered “basic infrastructure, like electricity” that every South Korean citizen should be able to access “without having to worry about the cost”, he told the FT in a recent interview.

It would be hard to overstate how seriously Seoul takes AI. Last year, President Lee Jae Myung said the technology had brought the country to “a great historical turning point”, asking: “Will we remain a follower at risk of being left behind, or become a leader able to seize limitless opportunities?”

To answer that question, Bae’s ministry last month selected domestic telecom companies SK Telecom and KT and internet provider Kakao to lead an “AI for Everyone” programme tasked with giving South Korea’s 51.6mn people free access to ChatGPT-like services and personal AI agents.

Bae, who led the development of corporate group LG’s Exaone AI model before joining the Lee administration last year, wants the three companies to launch general-purpose chatbots built primarily on domestic AI models by the end of the year, with more advanced agents to follow.

A separate ministry programme intended to develop a homegrown “foundation” AI model has been likened to the fictional deadly knockout contest featured in the hit Netflix series Squid Game.

Since August 2025, competing teams have been given computing power and state money, with the weakest culled every six months. Three have already been eliminated, with three remaining.

Bae has plenty of resources to throw at such initiatives thanks to a tax windfall Seoul has gained from the AI-driven global semiconductor boom. Under the “super budget” for 2027 unveiled this month, his ministry’s spending will rise 25 per cent to a record Won29.6tn ($21.8bn) — a third of it going towards AI, including up to Won3.85tn for the purchase of 10,000 coveted Nvidia Vera Rubin chips.

On social media this week, the minister made clear that concerns the technology could run out of control with catastrophic results would not reduce South Korea’s determination to become a “true AI top-three powerhouse”.

“We do not have the luxury of slowing down AI’s pace right now,” he wrote on X. “We will go faster, but more safely.”

Bae’s AI schemes reflect fears that, despite the prowess of local champions SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics in making the high-bandwidth memory chips that power AI development, South Korea risks becoming dependent on others for the technology built on top of them.

Such concern was heightened by Washington’s temporary imposition of export controls on Anthropic’s newest Fable and Mythos models in June.

“Soon it will be impossible to work without AI, just as today it is impossible to work without computers,” said Bae. “People have been thinking: what happens if we become dependent on American AI and then one day it is controlled or the price becomes too high?”

Korea was still six to 10 months behind AI leaders in the US and China, but the gap would narrow, he said.

The government’s embrace of AI is increasingly visible in everyday life. “AI Digital Learning Centres” are positioned by busy places such as the main railway station in the southern city of Busan. At Seoul’s Deoksu Palace, an AI-powered patrol robot scans for fires, intruders and people in distress.

The public is similarly energised. Polling company Ipsos found in June that 74 per cent of South Koreans were “excited” about AI products and services, compared with an average of 51 per cent in the 32 countries surveyed — and just 33 per cent in the US.

In July, app analytics firm Wiseapp estimated that ChatGPT had 24mn monthly active users in Korea, nearly 46 per cent of the population. Another 9mn used Google’s Gemini.

A Google-commissioned survey released last month found 82 per cent of Korean workers expected AI skills to become important or essential to their jobs within five years, while 85 per cent of parents considered learning to use AI at least as important for their children as maths and English.

Bae said shocks from the 1950-53 Korean war to the 1997 Asian financial crisis had reinforced a national instinct for rapid adaptation, while compressed economic development had left citizens little room to “take things slowly in life”.

“There is a very strong tendency always to be an early adopter: to accept something new and introduce it quickly,” he said.

But sociologist Lanu Kim, who this year interviewed about 70 people in fields particularly exposed to AI disruption, said such attitudes reflected “anxiety and competition” rather than cheery positivity.

Most of the patent lawyers, accountants, tax advisers and others that Kim interviewed were worried about the future but believed embracing AI offered the best chance of weathering any potential job storm.

“I think Koreans’ response to AI is best understood as an extension of that determination to survive,” Kim said.

Ipsos’s survey found 55 per cent of South Koreans thought AI would make the job market worse — higher than the 40 per cent average of surveyed countries.

Kang Seok-young, a freelance designer who works mainly for small businesses, uses AI to create source material but worries some clients are turning to it themselves for ordinary design work.

“Maybe that’s why my sales have fallen a bit,” he said. “In the near future we really might not need designers.”

But Song Jeong-hwa, whose work as a freelance translator and interpreter is often considered particularly vulnerable to AI, is growing more optimistic about a technology she says has made her more productive.

She has previously interpreted for former president Moon Jae-in and her main client is now a large tech company that has invested heavily in AI. When people ask if she fears being replaced by AI, she says: “My answer is always: ‘This company is using me.’”

Bae, whose book, To You, Who Fear AI, is a call for greater understanding and use of the technology co-written with ministry staff and published in July, believes AI can be liberating and socially beneficial.

“Many people predict that AI will enormously increase the wealth gap in capitalist societies,” he said. “The question President Lee and I are interested in is whether we could instead design AI in a way that reduces inequality.”

“Imagine instead that a certain amount of basic income could be generated by your AI,” he said. “If everyone could participate in economic activity through AI, and if my AI and my robots could guarantee a basic standard of living, I could devote myself to more valuable things.”