The Country That’s Madly in Love With AI

SEOUL, South Korea — At first, nothing seemed unusual while I had a snack at Wallstreat Financier, a popular bakery nestled in one of South Korea’s trendiest neighborhoods. Then I noticed a poster peppered with colorful stickers that stood out against the white walls.

“Did you know that the models in Wallstreat Financier’s dessert photoshoot are actually AI models?” read a cheerful note above the stickers. “They might look like people at first glance, but surprisingly, the faces in the photoshoot are all the faces of AI models created with generative AI. What do you think of AI models and AI photoshoots? Use a sticker to express your thoughts!”

Customers had the option to place stickers under three columns:

1. “The AI model is cool. The photo shoot was also fascinating and fun.”
   
2. “AI model? AI photo shoot? I’m not that interested.”
   
3. “I’m not sure if the AI model and the photo shoot feel natural or cool.”

The first column received such an overwhelming number of votes that the stickers were spilling to the side and completely covering the question itself.
That’s when I finally studied the photos on the wall: Beautiful foreign models smiled at the camera while posing with their delicately-crafted pastries alongside the bakery’s name. I would never have guessed it was anything beyond a well-manicured photoshoot. Even more shocking, at least to me, was the absolutely positive embrace of these AI models by the customers.

“Most people were in awe when I told them the models weren’t human,” says Seo Chang Woo, the owner of Wallstreat Financier, who was once a model himself. “Just a few people expressed that this could be dangerous if misused, but that’s why, rather than being too realistically true to life, we made sure the images still had an ‘AI look’ to it.” Using AI felt like a no-brainer to him: He wanted to create a gallery-like space that emphasized quality time with his desserts, and AI helped him create the necessary products — from the posters, to the packaging, to the music playlist — at an affordable price with maximum creative control.

The data bears out the immense AI optimism that exists in South Korea, particularly when compared to the United States and elsewhere in the West.

Out of 25 countries surveyed by Pew Research Center last year, South Korea had the lowest percentage of peoplewho said they were more concerned than excited about AI, at 16 percent. Meanwhile, 50 percent of people from the United States said they were more concerned than excited about AI — tied with Italy for the highest among those surveyed — with Australia coming in at 49 percent, Canada at 45 percent and the UK at 39 percent.

Other polls of South Koreans have found similar results. A Korean research company found that 70 percent of the people they surveyed believed AI would have a positive effect on society; more than half of Koreans say they already use AI in their work, per the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry; and 40 percent of the country’s smartphone owners are using the ChatGPT app, according to the market research firm Wiseapp·Retail.

Why is South Korea more open to a potential AI revolution than other countries? Some of it may be for unique historic and cultural reasons, but it’s also possible that South Korea is just ahead of the curve — and that the incentives driving an embrace of AI here will soon be found across the globe.

One simple explanation for the astoundingly good vibes toward AI within South Korea is that it’s a resource-scarce country that has historically relied on technology as its main economic booster. This reality is embedded deeply in the education system here, and it’s a significant source of pride. Students learn about South Korea’s dominance in the semiconductor market or the might of its high-tech auto or shipbuilding industry, all of which helped fuel the country’s miraculous rise from a war-ridden country in the ’50s to the global powerhouse it is today.

Here lies the key reason many Koreans don’t see AI as the same amorphous threat that others do: Technology is and always will be crucial for their livelihoods. The emergence of AI is just their latest sink-or-swim moment — and Koreans are willing to make the necessary changes to stay afloat.

“For decades, adopting new technology was basically linked to survival and growth,” says Sejin Kim, the associate director at the Center for Korean Innovation and Competitiveness. “AI turns into kind of FOMO, so people feel like ‘If I don’t learn how to use this, and then everybody used it already, then I’m going to be left out.’”

South Korea is also an aging society — far more rapidly than the rest of the world. Amid a drastic drop in fertility rates, some analysts predict that in 100 years, the peninsula’s population could drop to just 15 percent of what it is right now; in worst-case scenario estimates, people over the age of 65 will outnumber the working population in 75 years. To some, AI is an answer to this existential crisis. The promised increase in efficiency could help the dwindling number of people produce the same amount of productivity in the labor market, especially with the emergence of “physical AI,” which is a popular term used in Korea these days to refer to robots programmed with artificial intelligence.

And here is where the West might have to follow in South Korea’s footsteps. Many countries are experiencing similar population declines, with fertility rates below the replacement threshold nearly everywhere. Especially with immigration restrictions mounting across the world, it will be harder for Western countries to fill the gap in workers amid their aging populations.

“We don't have enough of a young workforce to be put to work. Then what are we going to naturally rely on — powered machines or robots, right?” Haeyoon Kim, founder of the newsletter Korea Tech & Trade Watch and a former nonresident fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, tells me. “This is critical for every country, but especially for Korea, given its aging society. And I think there has to be a really serious conversation politically how we're going to deal with this.”

It’s no wonder then that the Korean government has gone all out in investing in AI, marketing it as an inevitable and essential tool for the future and hastily creating some regulations around the technology — all in an effort to frame an optimistic narrative for its people. The positive spin becomes even clearer when comparing Korea’s Basic Act on Artificial Intelligence and the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act.

Both laws have been promoted by their governments as the first and most developed national plans for AI development. But the EU’s law is regulation-forward, with a focus on risk minimization and rights protection, while South Korea’s law prioritizes building an institutionalized framework for innovation, with some considerations of regulations for public trust. (In the United States, President Donald Trump has been a big booster of Big Tech’s unfettered AI agenda, but divisions in Congress have led to little legislative action and the absence of a unified message on the technology. Meanwhile, AI critics on the left and right are also jockeying for influence within both parties.)

For all the AI enthusiasm here, Korea is not completely immune to the tech anxiety that has led to boycotts and unrest in other countries. One survey conducted last year found that nearly half of the Korean respondents believed their jobs would be replaced by AI.

Most recently, Hyundai Motor Group’s plan to deploy AI-driven humanoid robots in its factories has triggered a strong backlash from the automaker’s powerful labor union. Negotiations with management are at a standstill for now, and the union has threatened the possibility of strikes if robots are deployed. The dispute, which has been a hot-button issue across the media, underscores how fears about AI are increasingly spilling into real-world labor conflicts, despite the collective mindset that views technological innovation as good and necessary.

Still, Western AI skeptics shouldn’t expect to find a major ally in South Korea anytime soon.

Koh Achim, author of an AI ethics newsletter in South Korea, says it’s hard to see Koreans changing their attitude toward AI en masse in the near future, for all the reasons cited above. He’s been working with other activists and organizers to figure out how to raise more healthy skepticism toward AI among Koreans, and it’s been an uphill battle. It will take time, he says, for people to look beyond the immediate benefits and optimism around AI driven by the government and corporations. But resistance might arrive eventually.

“When issues start happening around the widespread implementation of AI in our society, it won’t be a one-off massive snag that happens to an individual and holds symbolic meaning,” he says. “It’s going to be more behind-the-scenes and systematic, and that’s why I think it will take a while for people to rally around its issues.”