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.
- 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%
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Profile
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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.