Kim Yongjune
Emeritus Professor, Business Administration, Sungkyunkwan University
South Korea’s AI strategy positions the country as a global third force, avoiding direct involvement in the China-US head-to-head competition while balancing development quality with national sovereignty, and advocating that each nation should possess autonomy over its own AI governance. Achieving AI sovereignty requires three pillars: big data, data centers and energy, and indigenous software. South Korea has drawn on the EU’s privacy framework, leveraged the pandemic to build a nationwide data platform, secured computing power by restarting energy projects, and plans to develop domestic AI systems on the foundation of open platforms from China and the United States. South Korea’s neutral positioning has earned favor among Global South countries, and it has already initiated AI cooperation with Indonesia. With regard to Laos, South Korea plans to use official development assistance, drawing on the development model of Korean small cities, to deploy AI in promoting the integration of agriculture, processing and manufacturing, and tourism — the so-called “sixth industry” — thereby supporting Laos’s industrial upgrading and small-city digital development.
