Shaping Korea’s AI era.
Korea has already built many of the foundations for an AI-powered economy: world-leading advanced manufacturing, deep research capabilities, globally recognised creative industries and a highly connected workforce that is beginning to use AI in increasingly sophisticated ways.
The next opportunity is to spread those benefits more widely across the economy. Used well, AI can help Korea reinvigorate productivity, enable smaller businesses to catch up with larger firms, accelerate scientific discovery and support the next generation of growth in manufacturing, services and the creative industries.
Today, we’re publishing a factsheet looking at some of the opportunities AI could create in Korea. We estimate that faster AI-enabled R&D alone could create an additional KRW 33 trillion (US$24 billion) in economic value by 2040. Realising the wider opportunity will mean helping more businesses and workers move from basic adoption to confident, advanced use, while building trust through effective safeguards.
Here are five opportunities and priorities from AI we looked at in Korea:
If SMEs adopted AI at the same rate as large enterprises, they could unlock KRW 33 trillion (US$24 billion) in additional value by 2035, equivalent to 1.3% of GDP. This catch-up in adoption could be equivalent to or adding 390,000 extra workers.
The biggest benefits come when people know how to use AI in more advanced ways. Among the online adults sampled in Korea, 39% are “light users” of AI, using it mainly for simple chat and drafting; 38% are “intermediate users”; and 17% qualify as “AI Super Users”.
By generating and ranking new ideas, AI systems could help scientists and researchers in Korea explore 2x more plausible hypotheses each year, increasing the chances of breakthrough discoveries in both the private and public sectors.
In our polling, 31% of workers said they wanted to better understand how AI models work, 40% wanted to learn more about practical use cases, and 42% wanted to know how to prompt AI models more effectively.
In our polling, more than 83% of people in Korea said it was important for AI developers to incorporate safeguards such as pre-release testing, independent verification, and greater protection for children and other vulnerable users.
The factsheet also looks at how AI could reinforce some of Korea’s distinctive economic strengths. Embedding agentic AI and robotics into advanced manufacturing could add KRW 41 trillion to the sector’s GVA by 2035, while growth in AI-related sectors and businesses could support 530,000 new jobs. AI-assisted creative tools could generate KRW 10 trillion in additional annual value by 2035 and help Korean media reach an additional 3.1 billion people worldwide each year.
AI-assisted product development could also allow Korean start-ups to release new features 1.6 times faster than today. With the right skills, safeguards and support for adoption, AI can help Korea translate technological leadership into broader productivity growth and new opportunities across the economy.