{"id":922813,"date":"2026-07-27T08:13:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/27\/why-do-south-koreans-love-ai-so-much\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T08:13:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:13:20","slug":"why-do-south-koreans-love-ai-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/27\/why-do-south-koreans-love-ai-so-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do South Koreans love AI so much?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,\u00a0<\/em>sign up here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I landed in Seoul after a grueling 12-hour flight from San Francisco, I walked through an unmanned immigration checkpoint, where a machine scanned my face and passport. On the subway home, people were glued to their phones (powered by flawless 5G even underground), as we raced past platforms lined with LED screens of ads celebrating K-pop idols<\/a>\u2019 birthdays. When I got off the station in Gangnam, a cartoon-eyed robot on wheels<\/a> was waiting patiently at a crosswalk to deliver someone\u2019s dinner. Internet caf\u00e9s dotted the sidewalks, crammed with teenagers playing computer games, maybe hoping to become the next legendary pro gamer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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I stood at a bus stop<\/a> with interactive touch screens showing real-time bus schedule updates. It will soon become an \u201cAI bus stop<\/a>,\u201d the Gangnam district announced in June, with a kiosk that answers riders\u2019 questions in multiple languages. The news didn\u2019t surprise me. Having grown up in the city, I\u2019ve watched Seoul transform from a scrappy boomtown into the gleaming tech capital it is today.<\/p>\n

South Korea loves AI.<\/p>\n

While a public backlash<\/a> against AI is brewing across the US, South Koreans are optimistic. Only 16% say they are more concerned than excited about AI\u2014the lowest of any of the 25 countries surveyed<\/a> by the Pew Research Center\u2014while 50% of Americans were more worried than excited. A majority of Koreans use AI every day, either as a sort of personal assistant or to do tasks at work, according to surveys by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism<\/a> and Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the most wired countries in the world, South Korea loves to street-test every new technology on the block\u2014AI webcomics<\/a>, virtual K-pop idols<\/a>, and humanoid monks<\/a>. And the appetite for experimentation doesn\u2019t stop with ordinary citizens. Government agencies are early adopters too, deploying AI textbooks<\/a> in schools and AI eldercare robots<\/a> in welfare centers. South Koreans share a deep conviction that embracing technology is integral to modernizing the country and cementing its place in the global order. Their fascination with AI is just the latest incarnation of that ethos\u2014and it\u2019s making them anxious to stay ahead.<\/p>\n

Engineered enthusiasm<\/strong><\/h3>\n

All this techno-optimism has largely been engineered by South Korea\u2019s national agenda to make AI a motor of economic growth. \u201cThe South Korean government has designated an AI-powered Fourth Industrial Revolution as the country\u2019s path forward and aggressively promoted and invested in it,\u201d says Chihyung Jeon, a professor of science and technology policy at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. \u201cSouth Koreans have consistently and relentlessly been told by the government about AI\u2019s potential to create a better future.\u201d<\/p>\n

As South Korea rose from the ashes of the Korean War, technology lifted the nation from poverty into an economic powerhouse. In the 1970s, South Korea manufactured steel and ships, then semiconductors in the 1980s, broadband in the 1990s, and smartphones in the 2000s. Today, Samsung and SK Hynix supply most of the world\u2019s high-bandwidth memory chips, which power the cutting-edge Nvidia hardware used to train AI models. South Korea\u2019s economy now orbits these two semiconductor giants: The country\u2019s main equity index, Kospi, surged to record highs in 2026, powered by the soaring share prices of both companies, each valued above $1 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lee Jae-myung, president of South Korea, has pledged to vault the country into the ranks of the \u201ctop three AI powers\u201d alongside the US and China. After taking office in 2025, he launched the Presidential Council on National AI Strategy to help buy massive amounts of computing power and a sovereign AI foundation model project that funds Korean companies to develop homegrown AI models. The government has also supported semiconductor titans, including Samsung and SK Hynix, through generous tax credits and low-interest financing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

South Korea\u2019s policy posture also prioritizes accelerating AI development over safety considerations. In 2024, South Korea\u2019s legislature passed the AI Basic Act<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s first comprehensive AI laws, to promote AI development and establish light-touch regulatory guardrails. Seventy percent of South Koreans say advancing science and medicine through AI innovation is a bigger priority<\/a> than protecting industries through regulation, according to the 2026 Stanford AI Index.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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All of that effort might be paying off. The same index ranked South Korea as having the third largest number of notable AI models<\/a> in the world, based on criteria such as state-of-the-art advancements or high citation rates. For many small countries like South Korea, AI is a chance to punch above their weight.<\/p>\n

The blind spots<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But that single-mindedness can crowd out critical reflection on AI\u2019s broader societal impacts. \u201cBecause the national agenda on AI prioritizes economic development,\u201d says Jeon, the professor of science and technology policy, \u201cthere isn\u2019t much reflection on the social, political, ethical dimensions of the technology.\u201d In 2025, the South Korean government faced a fierce backlash<\/a> for rolling out AI textbooks riddled with factual inaccuracies and data privacy risks without testing them first in a pilot program to evaluate how they affect student learning.<\/p>\n

And despite their optimism, South Koreans are still worried that AI could displace them from their jobs. After Hyundai announced in January that it will deploy Atlas humanoid robots across its car factories, the Hyundai Motor Group union protested vehemently. \u201cWithout labor-management agreement, not a single robot using new technology will be allowed to enter the workplace,\u201d the union said. Sixty-four percent of South Koreans fear AI could displace human labor and exacerbate inequality, although 52% believe it could also increase productivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On a recent Friday night in the Seoul Central Market, I went out with my cousins to a pocha<\/em>, a late-night restaurant that serves fish cakes stacked in neat pyramids. As we clinked our cups of soju <\/em>cut with beer\u2014the scrappy staple cocktail of every Korean night out\u2014one cousin asked me if I\u2019d asked ChatGPT about my saju<\/em>, a traditional Korean fortune-telling practice. <\/p>\n

A 29-year-old insurance agent in Seoul praying for a new job and a boyfriend, she said asking ChatGPT about work and dating was her favorite pastime. She pulled up her phone and punched my birth date into the chatbot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Addicted to their screens, trapped between unemployment<\/a> and dead-end jobs, and priced out of marriage and homeownership, 46% of South Koreans in their 20s have used a chatbot to read their fortunes, according to a survey<\/a> by Korea Gallup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My cousin said she also asks ChatGPT for tips on trading stocks, dreaming big about making bank on her investment accounts into which she\u2019s been pouring her salary. ChatGPT, she believes, is her portal out of reality into a better future.<\/p>\n

Despite how fond she is of the chatbot as her shaman and financial advisor, she fears losing her job to AI. She still uses ChatGPT feverishly at work, as all her coworkers do, afraid of falling behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI sometimes fear AI, but for now, it\u2019s just so useful,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,\u00a0 sign up here . When I landed in Seoul after a grueling 12-hour flight from San Francisco, I walked through an unmanned immigration checkpoint, where a machine scanned my face and passport. On the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":922814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32341,683],"tags":[112848,7070],"class_list":["post-922813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-koreans","category-south","tag-koreans","tag-south"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}