Countries / South Korea

AI in South Korea

Pushing to become a top-three AI power, with state-backed sovereign models and compute alongside Asia’s first comprehensive AI law.

Profile reviewed 24 Sep 202618 developments tracked

2026 government AI budget, more than triple 2025: 10.1 trillion won
Nvidia GPUs pledged to Korean government and industry (Oct 2025): 260,000+
Share of the HBM memory market held by SK hynix and Samsung (Q2 2026): 83%

Updated daily · newest first

Latest from South Korea

Adoption3 Nov 2026 South Korea plans to nearly double AI and chip spending in its 2027 budget President Lee Jae-myung asked parliament on 2 November to approve a record budget that puts 21.3 trillion won into chips, physical AI and AI data centres. Infrastructure · Policy Policy21 Oct 2026 South Korea issues guidelines on using AI chatbots for mental health The health ministry warns against self-diagnosis and over-reliance, after a survey found most recent users had turned to AI for emotional support. Policy Policy20 Oct 2026 South Korea says AI agents may be behind a wave of bank breaches At least seven financial institutions were breached and data on about 68,000 people reportedly exposed. Officials say there are signs AI agents were used, but have not confirmed… AI-powered attacks · Policy · Security Invention9 Oct 2026 Samsung guides to a record quarter on AI memory demand Samsung's Q3 guidance puts sales near 195 trillion won and operating profit near 107.4 trillion won, against 12.17 trillion won of operating profit a year earlier. Hardware · Infrastructure Policy7 Oct 2026 Korean lawmaker answers a Suneung exam question with AI glasses in front of officials During a parliamentary audit, a lawmaker used AI smart glasses to solve a college entrance exam question; the ministry is preparing countermeasures. Policy Research3 Oct 2026 A new benchmark spots AI-written papers by their broken reasoning Researchers in Seoul and Minnesota say AI-generated academic papers give themselves away not through their prose but through arguments that fail to connect, and report 85.9% accuracy detecting… Research Invention1 Oct 2026 South Korea shows AI drone swarms in public for the first time on Armed Forces Day AI drone swarms, uncrewed ground vehicles and a laser anti-drone system made their public debut at South Korea's 78th Armed Forces Day. Robotics Invention29 Sep 2026 Samsung puts $1bn into Helix, the AI infrastructure venture run by AWS’s former boss Samsung Electronics and five affiliates are backing Helix Digital Infrastructure with $1bn, a bet that the bottleneck in AI is power and property rather than silicon. Hardware · Infrastructure

Profile

Reviewed monthly · Sources (7)

Strategy

The 2026 budget puts 10.1 trillion won into AI, more than triple 2025. The sovereign foundation-model contest narrowed to LG AI Research, SK Telecom and Upstage in Aug 2026.

Regulation

The AI Basic Act took effect on 22 Jan 2026: generative-AI content must be labelled, “high-impact” AI carries extra duties, and foreign firms need a local representative. Fines of up to 30m won are waived for at least the first year.

Compute

Nvidia pledged more than 260,000 GPUs to the government and industry (Oct 2025). The National AI Computing Center in Haenam broke ground in Aug 2026. SK hynix and Samsung together hold 83% of the HBM market.

Key labs

LG AI Research, SK Telecom, Upstage, Naver Cloud, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix.

Notable models

SKT A.X K2 and LG K-EXAONE 2.0, both open-source (Jul 2026); Upstage Solar Open 2 (Jul 2026).

What to watch

The sovereign-model contest picks two finalists in early 2027; AI Basic Act fines once the grace period ends; Samsung closing the HBM gap on SK hynix.

Sources