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DP presidential frontrunner Lee Jae-myung pledges 100 trillion won in AI investment

Published: 15 Apr. 2025, 14:56 Updated: 15 Apr. 2025, 20:36

Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung looks around local fabless startup FuriosaAI's office in southern Seoul on April 14. [NEWS1]

Former Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung pledged to invest 100 trillion won ($70 billion) in AI if elected president.

“The government will act as a primer for private investment and increase AI-related budgets to levels exceeding those of advanced economies,” Lee said in a Facebook post on Monday.

This marks his first policy pledge since announcing his candidacy last Thursday.

“The government expects around 65 trillion won in private investment in AI over the next several years,” said a campaign official. “The goal is to raise around 100 trillion won total over a five-year term by supplementing this with public funding.”

Lee emphasized that “AI is no longer optional, but essential.”

Lee outlined several key promises: establishing national AI data clusters; securing GPUs and developing neural processing units (NPU) to strengthen technological sovereignty; launching a global AI co-investment fund; creating AI departments at regional universities and expanding military service exemptions for top AI talent as well as attracting global talent; easing AI-related regulations and developing a Korean version of ChatGPT that would be freely available to the public to provide "AI for All."

Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung holds a neural processing unit during his visit to local fabless startup FuriosaAI in southern Seoul on April 14. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

According to his campaign, Lee envisions an “AI sovereign wealth fund” to support the growth of a domestic tech champion akin to Nvidia — which was referred to as “K-Nvidia” — with the benefits of AI-driven wealth distributed widely among the public in what he calls an “AI-based welfare society.”

Lee visited FuriosaAI, Korea’s leading fabless company in the NPU sector, on Monday.

“I will examine how the nation can prepare for the AI era," Lee said during a roundtable discussion.

FuriosaAI CEO June Paik and other company officials stated, "Given the rapid pace of development in the AI field, strong government leadership is needed in areas such as capital investment, talent recruitment, infrastructure building and fund creation," according to campaign spokesperson and DP Rep. Kang Yu-jung.

As Gyeonggi governor in 2020, Lee established a dedicated AI Industry Strategy Office. His core AI policy advisers include Park Tae-woong, head of the Center for Collective Intelligence at The Institute for Democracy, and Prof. Zhang Byoung-tak of the Interdisciplinary Program in Artificial Intelligence at Seoul National University.

Then-DP leader Lee Jae-myung issues a statement regarding former president Yoon Suk Yeol's martial law declaration on Dec. 6, 2024. [YONHAP]

A think tank whose name roughly translates to Growth and Integration will be established for the presidential campaign, according to reports.

Meanwhile, Lee published a book on Monday titled "The People Make It Happen in the End." Within the book, Lee recalls how he first contacted far-left media figure Kim Eo-jun of the Ddanzi Ilbo and YouTuber Lee Dong-hyeong of Lee Dong-hyeong TV immediately after the martial law declaration on Dec. 3.

“I needed to get the word out to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible,” wrote Lee. “Influential YouTubers came to mind.”

Lee says he called both men while riding to the National Assembly in a car driven by his wife, Kim Hye-kyung, to ask for a livestream broadcast.

When he first heard about martial law from his wife at home, he laughed it off saying, "This is deepfake, fake news."

Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung's new book is displayed at a Kyobo Book Centre in central Seoul on April 14. [NEWS1]

But after receiving a call from DP Rep. Jung Chung-rae and checking the party leadership’s Telegram chat, he realized it was real.

“A word I didn’t even think about just slipped out,” he recalled — “Insane.”

"I had been convinced of the likelihood of martial law since before the April 2024 general election," wrote Lee. "One of the clearest early signs appeared during the National Assembly confirmation hearing of Labor Minister Kim Moon-soo."

"The candidate came across as a hard-line ideologue, deliberately revealing his far-right views," wrote Lee.

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.

BY HA JUN-HO, SHIM SAE-ROM [[email protected]]