South Korea is the most AI-optimistic country in the world, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 25 nations. Only 16% of South Koreans say they are more concerned than excited about AI — the lowest figure in the study — compared with 50% of Americans who lean worried. A majority of South Koreans now use AI every day, either as a personal assistant or at work, per surveys from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The optimism is backed by hard infrastructure. Samsung and SK Hynix supply most of the world's high-bandwidth memory chips that feed Nvidia's AI accelerators, and both are now valued above $1 trillion. The Kospi surged to record highs in 2026 on their share-price gains, making the index a near-direct proxy for the global AI build-out.
The pro-AI posture is also engineered policy. President Lee Jae-myung, who took office in 2025, pledged to vault South Korea into the ranks of the "top three AI powers" alongside the United States and China. He launched the Presidential Council on National AI Strategy to procure computing power at scale and to fund a sovereign foundation-model project for Korean developers, while extending tax credits and low-interest financing to Samsung and SK Hynix.
Key facts
- 01Only 16% of South Koreans are more concerned than excited about AI — the lowest of 25 countries in Pew's survey, versus 50% in the US.
- 0270% of South Koreans say advancing science and medicine through AI is a bigger priority than protecting industries through regulation, per the 2026 Stanford AI Index.
- 03Stanford's index ranks South Korea third globally for the number of notable AI models produced.
- 04Samsung and SK Hynix each carry valuations above $1 trillion, lifting the Kospi to record highs in 2026.
- 0546% of South Koreans in their 20s have used a chatbot to read their fortunes, according to Korea Gallup.
Chihyung Jeon, a professor of science and technology policy at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, traces the enthusiasm to a deliberate state campaign.
The country has a track record of riding successive technology waves: steel and ships in the 1970s, semiconductors in the 1980s, broadband in the 1990s, and smartphones in the 2000s. AI is the next wave, and the legislative scaffolding is already in place. In 2024 South Korea passed the AI Basic Act, one of the world's first comprehensive AI laws, opting for light-touch guardrails rather than EU-style restrictions. The 2026 Stanford AI Index found 70% of South Koreans prioritize advancing science and medicine through AI over protecting industries via regulation.
The bet is producing results on the model side. Stanford's index ranks South Korea third in the world for the number of notable AI models, behind only the US and China — outsized for a country of 52 million people. Deployments are visible at street level: AI bus stops in Gangnam announced in June 2026, AI textbooks rolled out in schools in 2025, eldercare robots in welfare centers, and humanoid delivery robots threading sidewalks in Seoul.
The acceleration has costs. The 2025 AI textbook rollout drew a fierce backlash after the materials shipped with factual inaccuracies and data-privacy risks, without a pilot program to test learning outcomes. And labor is pushing back where automation hits the factory floor: after Hyundai announced in January it would deploy Atlas humanoid robots across its car factories, the Hyundai Motor Group union demanded a veto.
“Without labor-management agreement, not a single robot using new technology will be allowed to enter the workplace”— Hyundai Motor Group union, Statement from the union
Survey data captures the ambivalence. 64% of South Koreans fear AI could displace human labor and worsen inequality, even as 52% believe it could lift productivity. Jeon argues the national agenda's economic focus has crowded out scrutiny of the social, political, and ethical dimensions of the technology.
Consumer use, meanwhile, has gone deeply personal. 46% of South Koreans in their 20s have used a chatbot to read their fortunes, according to Korea Gallup, with ChatGPT increasingly serving as a stand-in for the traditional saju fortune-telling practice. Younger users are also turning to chatbots for stock-trading tips and dating advice — a generation priced out of homeownership and marriage and looking for any edge.
“I sometimes fear AI, but for now, it's just so useful.”— Anonymous insurance agent, 29-year-old in Seoul
The South Korean experiment is the clearest counterpoint to the Western framing that AI adoption requires extensive guardrails first. Seoul is running the opposite playbook: dominate the chip supply chain, subsidize domestic model labs, ship AI into classrooms and welfare centers, and treat the social friction as a manageable cost. If the Kospi's trajectory holds and the model-count lead widens, the policy template will be hard for smaller economies to ignore — and harder for US and EU regulators to dismiss as reckless. The risk is concentrated in two places investors should watch: the labor response as humanoid deployments scale at Hyundai and beyond, and the quality of public-sector rollouts after the textbook stumble. Neither has stopped the momentum so far.
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