Lee Says South Korea Must Move Beyond Chips to Physical AI

President Lee Jae-myung said on July 25 that he wants to make South Korea indispensable to global progress and turn the country into a leader in emerging industries.

Speaking at a luncheon with members of the Korean community at a hotel in San Francisco, Lee said the artificial intelligence era has opened a new chapter and presents South Korea with a real opportunity.

Citing the AI summit held a day earlier and announced investment and cooperation plans between global big tech companies and South Korean firms, Lee said his goal is to make South Korea an irreplaceable country. He said he wants to build as many sectors as possible in which neither artificial intelligence nor industrial development can advance without South Korea.

"For now, it is semiconductors, but physical AI and countless new industrial sectors will emerge in the future," Lee said. "Global industry has now reached a point where it cannot function without South Korea's semiconductor plants."

Lee also cited South Korea's experience with democracy as a key competitive strength in the AI era. In a high-tech society, democracy itself becomes a core element of industrial and economic development, he said. Rationality, objectivity, transparency and predictability are bound to support growth.

He also said South Korea is the only country, both historically and in practical terms, among nations liberated from colonial rule to achieve democratization and industrialization at the same time and then rise to developed-country status. Lee added that even a self-coup, which he said succeeds more than 90% of the time on average, was defeated peacefully, calling it a great peaceful revolution in world history.

Kim Yeon-ji, Hankyung.com reporter kongzi@hankyung.com