South Korea charts one-of-a-kind course in AI race with U.S. and China

2025-08-08 12:19:16

Ryu Young-Sang, CEO of Sk Telecom, South Korean Telecom, told CNBC that AI helps telecommunications companies improve efficiency in their networks.

Manaure Quintero | AFP | Gety pictures

South Korea has cost some of its largest companies and promising startups to build a foundational national model of artificial intelligence using local technology mainly, in a rare step to maintain the country with the United States and China.

The project will include South Korea technologies from semiconductors to software, as Seoul is looking to create the Amnesty International industry close to self -sufficiency and places itself as an alternative to China and the United States

South Korea’s approach is distinguished from the way countries and other regions are close to artificial intelligence, according to analysts.

“While sovereign artificial intelligence is an increasing direction, South Korea’s approach is distinct,” Nick -hand said, practicing in favor of artificial intelligence in the Votorum group, for CNBC. “The country aims to combine its dominance in the production of memory chips and the development of the original Amnesty International.”

The Ministry of Science, Information and Communications Technology (MSIT) has announced that five unions have been chosen to develop models. One of them is led by SK Telecom, the communications giant in Korea and includes the Krafton Games and Rebel starting a chip Among other companies.

There are other teams led by some other prominent companies in the country, including LG and Naver.

“We are going through an important turning point in terms of our technological development. So, at the national level, Korea focuses on ensuring that we put the technical basis in obtaining our competitiveness,” Kim Taeun, head of the SK Telecom, who leads the company’s union, told CNBC.

Kim added: “Korea has many entities that excel in the creation of the large Amnesty International Industry. We can clearly see the possibility that we are very able to create a good Amnesty International Phara.”

The “stack” indicates the various technologies that make up another product or technology.

South Korea

The initiative aims to rely on the strategic position of some South Korea companies and the technology it is developing, which is necessary for Amnesty International.

For example, SK Hynix is made high -range memory (HBM), which is very important for NVIDIA products. Samsung is also another major memory player. SK Telecom expands its work in data centers. While the rebellions, which are part of the SKT Federation, are developing chips designed to deal with the burdens of artificial intelligence.

Samsung, at the same time, has its own chips, also known as Foundry.

“This means that the country possesses the entire artificial intelligence stove, from chips to cloud models to artificial intelligence models, as well as a strong society from advanced artificial intelligence researchers who spread activity and patents secure.”

Given the complications of technology supply chains, no country can do so alone. Federations will continue to rely on GPU from an American company Nafidia Which has become the golden standard for training artificial intelligence models.

Meanwhile, SK Telecom will train the models that it develops on its TITAN computers, which consists of NVIDIA graphics processing units, in addition to the artificial intelligence data center that the company develops with it Amazon.

Road Map Artificial Intelligence Model

SK Telecom is not new in the artificial intelligence game. Company A trial version of the first chatbot was launched Based on his great language model in 2022, it is called “A.” It is clear “point”. Since then, more advanced versions of the model and chatbot have been developed.

Kim said that the SK Telecom Federation is planning to issue its first model by the end of the year. It will initially focus on the market in South Korea, but it can be used globally. The form will be open source, which means that it will liberate the developers to use and build on it, and perhaps with some licensing requirements.

Any models of Amnesty International that come out of the South Korea project will face intense competition from players, including Openai and Anthropic, as well as many powerful people Open source offers from Chinese companies Love Ali Baba And Deepseek.

The creation of the Amnesty International model will not be a problem, given the SK Telecom and other companies that have already been proven to do so.

The biggest challenge will be to put models that can compete with those who come out of Frontier AI laboratories, which flow on billions of dollars in research and development. Another issue is to obtain a preposition between developers to build on these models. This has success in other open source models, such as those in Ali Baba.

Kim from SK Telecom said the goal is to create models that can compete with these other companies.

“Our first goal is to create a very strong model for the open source and we have already an example of these open source models on an equal performance in terms of performance with this large technology (players) such as Openai or Anthropor,” Kim told CNBC.

He added that there will be models of different sizes that can be used by various industries.

An open -source National AI model can provide benefits by granting companies all over the country to reach the latest technologies without the need to rely on a technical giant from abroad.

Meanwhile, South Korean Amnesty models can be placed as an alternative to systems developed in the United States and Chinese.

“In addition to the local benefits, the installed Amnesty International model provides great export potential. Just as Korea has been distinguished in memory chips, this may become an important product for other countries that seek alternatives to American or Chinese regimes, which enhances Korea’s position in the global scene of Amnesty International,” Bastil said.

The sovereignty of artificial intelligence

This batch of South Korea supports the concept of “sovereign artificial intelligence” that has gained strength with many countries.

This is the idea that artificial intelligence models and services, which governments see are strategic importance, must be built inside a country and be operated on locally located servers.

“All major countries are increasingly anxious about the sovereignty of artificial intelligence, as the United States and China are competing for the dominance of artificial intelligence,” said the Potorum group.

“Given the increasing effect of artificial intelligence on critical sectors such as health care, financing, defense and government, countries cannot bear control of their digital intelligence in foreign entities.”

Other countries are taking different approaches to developing artificial intelligence. In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Dependence strongly on American technology To develop artificial intelligence. In Europe, a lot of hope is installed in the start of the French Mistral Ai to appear as a leading company in the region in technology. However, Europe will also need to rely heavily on American chips and other technology.

South Korea is trying to address more parts of the technological supply chain itself because it builds its capabilities on artificial intelligence, although it will continue to rely on some infrastructure from companies such as NVIDIA as well as Amazon and Microsoft.