Challenges and Opportunities for Korea's Innovation System in the Era of AI: Openness vs. Security

• In Event: Performance and its Discontents: Contemporary Challenges in Public Management

Abstract

The era of AI transition and strategic competition, Korea's innovation system faces a distinctive tension that earlier transitions did not pose in the same way: the pull between openness and security. Openness accelerates innovation: access to global talent, cross-border collaboration, open-source models, and international capital have historically been engines of Korean technological catch-up and leadership. But in an era of intensifying US-China technology competition, tightening export controls, and growing anxieties over data sovereignty, critical infrastructure, and dual-use AI capabilities, unfettered openness carries new strategic risks. At the same time, an overcorrection toward security and self-sufficiency risks insulating Korea's innovation ecosystem from the very flows of knowledge, capital, and talent that have driven its growth. This paper examines how Korea can navigate this openness-security tension in designing innovation policy, including AI transition. It explores where government must draw firmer boundaries—around critical technologies, sensitive infrastructure, and dual-use research—and where continued openness remains essential to sustaining innovation capacity and global competitiveness. It also explores how agentic AI reshapes this calculus: its capacity for autonomous action raises new security concerns around accountability, transparency, and control, while its productivity potential makes continued access to global AI ecosystems more, not less, important. Drawing on Korea's historical experience, the paper argues that navigating this tension successfully will again depend on strategic policy design by government, creative adaptation by the private sector, and a foundation of mutual trust between them.

Author

• Ji Woong Yoon, Science & Technology Policy Institute (STEPI)
  Presenting Author