Lee Jae Myung Says AI Era Offers New Opportunity For South Korea

According to Yonhap, President Lee Jae Myung said the emergence of the artificial intelligence era gives South Korea a fresh opening and vowed to turn the country from a follower into a global leader. Speaking to South Korean residents in San Francisco during a two-day visit focused on boosting AI investment and cooperation with global tech firms, Lee said South Korea should become an indispensable country that others believe they cannot do without.

He said a series of business deals and partnership agreements reached a day earlier between U.S.-based tech companies including Nvidia, OpenAI and Anthropic and South Korean firms such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix would total US$950 billion, according to a presidential official. Lee also said South Korea's democratization experience is one of its strengths in the AI era and argued that democracy supports industrial and economic development through reasonableness, objectivity, transparency and predictability. He added that South Korea has risen from a war-torn nation to an economic powerhouse and said the global industry already cannot function without the country's semiconductor factories.