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AI’s potential to boost productivity, power innovation, and supercharge creative output.
AI is boosting productivity across Korea.
Alongside accelerating creativity and innovation, AI will make it easier for workers and businesses to get more done, boosting economic growth and living standards.
of Korean businesses have found real use cases for AI tools.
Over time, AI will enable businesses to redesign their business processes and how they work: letting them be more proactive, reduce waste and increase efficiency. Korean businesses are already integrating AI into their workflows. Of the businesses that say they use AI or machine learning, 51% have found real use cases for AI tools, while another 48% are in the process of experimenting with AI tools.
Accelerating business growth.
52% of businesses that are already using AI tools say AI has accelerated their business growth, rising to 85% for large enterprises.
AI is powering Korea’s next wave of innovation.
For Korea, AI-driven innovation can help build on its existing strengths in R&D and manufacturing exports, while helping the economy diversify into new markets and business models.
Enhance Korea’s strengths.
Accelerate R&D.
AI will help industries be faster at innovating new products or improving existing ones. In total, we estimate that the AI-driven acceleration of R&D could create an extra KRW 13 trillion (USD 9.4 billion) in growth for the Korean economy.
Transform manufacturing.
AI-driven innovation will make it easier for the country’s global manufacturing firms to further optimize their supply chains, increase efficiency, reduce downtime and offset rising input costs. In total, we estimate that AI could help grow the manufacturing sector in Korea by KRW 136 trillion (USD 99 billion), or a quarter of the sector’s value.
Create spillover value from local tech to the rest of the economy.
Thirty years ago, there were no search engines, app stores or YouTube creators. The Internet revolution helped create a whole new generation of businesses – and in the same way, AI will act as the catalyst for a new generation of startup companies. These tech startups can in turn create additional spillover value for the rest of the economy. For every won in Korea’s local tech scene, the nation’s economy as a whole benefits by more than three point eight times that amount.
AI will supercharge Korea’s creative output.
Globally, Korean cultural exports have gained immense popularity. Korea’s content industry achieved record exports of more than KRW 18 trillion (USD 13.09 billion) in 2022, surpassing major manufacturing sectors such as secondary batteries and electric vehicles. This “Korean wave” has prompted a tourism surge, with over 16 million international arrivals in 2024.8
Boosting productivity for creative professionals.
In our modeling, we find that around a quarter (24%) of tasks in creative occupations can see their productivity improved by AI. By automating time-intensive tasks like editing, subtitling, and post-production, AI can help offset unsustainable rises in production budgets, and allows creators to focus on storytelling and ideation.
Helping Korean creators reach global audiences.
Fewer than 1% of the world’s population speaks Korean; meaning most global audiences are unable to access Korean content.9 AI-powered translation and dubbing tools are helping to bridge this gap. AI translation tools could help creators from Korea reach another 3 billion people.
In total, we estimate that AI could help increase the size of the creative sector by KRW 3.3 trillion (USD 2.3 billion).
Note: All data points, unless otherwise specified, are derived by Public First’s own research & modelling. These are estimations, and the figures have been rounded up.