Korea’s Tech Story: Where It’s Been, and Where It’s Going
Hello, I’m Ylli Bajraktari, CEO of the Special Competitive Studies Project. In this edition of 2-2-2 SCSP’s Channing Lee and Joe Wang from the Foreign Policy Panel discuss some takeaways from an SCSP trip to the Republic of Korea.
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Korea’s Tech Story: Where It’s Been, and Where It’s Going
In the global technology competition, there are few better partners for the United States than the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea). With cutting-edge technological capabilities, the ROK possesses innovation power that should be the envy of others around the world. And the ROK’s remarkable story — transforming from a war-torn military dictatorship that was among the poorest countries in the world, into a vibrant democracy that is now among the richest countries in the world — only reinforces the promise of what tech-enabled democracy can offer, over the perils of techno-authoritarianism.
At the end of February, an SCSP team traveled to Seoul and saw first-hand a tech industry excited to embrace and lead in AI and other cutting-edge technologies, and a government eager to partner with the United States and other allies and partners to promote and protect our economic interests, as well as our core values. Below, we share some of our findings.
Growing Momentum
The ROK has always enjoyed close relations with the United States. Last year, the two countries celebrated the U.S.-ROK Alliance’s 70th Anniversary. The bilateral trading and investment relationship is among the largest in the world – worth $1.6 trillion annually – and the ROK sends the third most students to study in the United States, behind only China and India. In 2022, Presidents Biden and Yoon highlighted in their joint statement that technology continues to serve as a pillar of the relationship. And over the last few months, our two countries launched a Next Generation Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) Dialogue and convened, with India, the first trilateral technology dialogue.
The ROK’s focus on tech has been a central element of the Yoon administration’s quest to become a GPS – or “global pivotal state,” a play on the ubiquitous acronym for “global positioning system.” Its latest National Security Strategy calls out GPS to describe where the ROK is, and where it is going: a high-tech society that has emerged from the devastations of war, and looks forward to protecting and promoting the values that underpin the rules-based international order.
A Success Story in Innovation Power
After fighting in the Korean War ceased in 1953 and split the Korean peninsula into North and South, the North – with Soviet support – initially outperformed the South economically. But over 70 years, the ROK has evolved into a global economic and technology powerhouse famously dubbed the "Miracle on the Han River." The ROK now ranks 6th in the Global AI Index, became the 7th nation to reach space, boasts the 13th largest economy in the world (and 4th largest in Asia), and is home to some of the world’s leading industrial giants.
How did they do it? By embracing technology and innovation. At the January 2023 World Economic Forum in Davos, ROK President Yoon highlighted the many global challenges that the ROK seeks to help tackle — from climate change to securing supply chains — and the specific technologies the ROK is ready to bring to bear, including semiconductors, rechargeable batteries, nuclear power, and biotechnology.
A few tech highlights from our trip:
At Hyundai Motor Company’s ZER01NE start-up incubator, a company demonstrated how they tuned electronic music to help individuals using cochlear implants to hear music again and how this exposure to music then helped these individuals better hear words through their implants.
At Naver, the search company-turned-tech giant showcased advancements in virtual reality-guided navigation and in-building robot delivery systems, including technologies that earned recognition at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The corporation’s new headquarters (“Naver 1784,” in homage to the first industrial revolution) opened in April 2022, complete with special elevators and corridors to accommodate robots. Company representatives say it is the “most intelligent” building in the ROK.
At SK Telecom, we learned about the company’s new AI-powered personal assistant for mobile phones, exemplifying how the telecommunications industry is adopting and applying AI. SKT recently joined forces with other global telecommunication companies to form the Global Telco AI Alliance, to better leverage AI for the telecommunications industry. SKT has also partnered with OpenAI, Joby, and a multitude of American companies to develop their AI capabilities.
Opportunities Ahead
When President Biden visited the ROK in May 2022, he toured Samsung’s new chip manufacturing facility. Samsung joins Taiwan-based TSMC in constructing new factories in the United States, the former in Texas and the latter in Arizona, as CHIPS and Science Act funding will reportedly provide $6 billion to Samsung and ($5 billion to TSMC) to support their effort to bolster the semiconductor supply chain in America.
As the United States and the ROK continue to elevate tech cooperation, a few areas of opportunity lept out to us from our visit.
First, talent exchange has not only been a successful pillar of our two countries’ alliance, but has also delivered concrete results for both tech and innovation ecosystems. We should double down on strengthening the talent flows between our nations, and make it a model for our tech cooperation with other like-minded partners. Many of the ROK’s top tech executives, such as Kakao CEO Minsoo Yeo and Naver CEO Soo-yeon Choi, have studied in the United States and/or spent time working for U.S. companies. Top tech talents have returned to the ROK and built up its tech sector in ways that complement U.S. industry. In many instances, such as the implicit rivalry between Apple and Samsung, such talent exchange has created healthy competition, which brings out the best of both American and Korean innovation.
Second, the ROK’s – and Japan’s and Germany’s – post-war development story represent the best models of what partnership with the United States can achieve. For the United States and the ROK, leveraging the success of our longstanding alliance can be the basis of how we can meaningfully engage with “Global South” and “swing state” countries, demonstrating what partnership with the United States and its allies and partners can achieve for these countries. The ROK’s GPS strategy addresses this issue head-on, committing to build “regional cooperation networks” with partners around the world on the premise that such is the “role and responsibility” of a “top ten global economic power and a leading democratic nation.” In addition to its steadfast alliance with the United States, the ROK has successfully built relationships around the world, including some that are unique to middle powers and exclude the United States, such as MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, Australia). As a senior Korean official said in private remarks during our visit, the ROK can serve as a “diplomatic multiplier,” helping the United States and allies and partners form new relationships where traditional ones have not flourished.
This May – after SCSP’s AI Expo for National Competitiveness – the ROK will host the second AI Safety Summit, following the first global convening in Bletchley Park last November. The AI Summit will once again serve as an opportunity for the ROK to showcase its simultaneously growing innovation power and geopolitical influence. As the United States charts new paths for the creation of values-based tech alliances, it must not lose sight of our allies’ success stories.