[Digital Today reporter Hwang Chi-kyu] The Korea Association for ICT Promotion (KAIT) held the 16th Digital Insight Forum on Wednesday morning at Josun Palace Seoul Gangnam. Participants discussed changes in the global AIDC industry and ways to strengthen South Korea’s AI infrastructure competitiveness.

In opening remarks, forum co-chair Choi Jae-yoo (최재유), a former second vice minister at the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, said AIDC is a comprehensive industry that requires combined capabilities across semiconductors, servers, power, cooling, software and networks. He said it is difficult to build an ecosystem with global competitiveness through the capabilities of a single company. He stressed that South Korea must bring together its capabilities in semiconductors, power, ICT and manufacturing into a single AIDC ecosystem and secure competitiveness that can be exported as an integrated package.

Jung Seok-keun (정석근), head of SK Telecom’s AI CIC and CEO of SK Hyper, delivered the keynote address on AI data centres as intelligent production factories. He defined data centres in the AI era as “AI token factories” and highlighted that AIDC is evolving beyond facilities that store and process data into core industrial infrastructure that continuously produces intelligence based on AI models.

Jung said AIDC is closely connected not only to semiconductors and power but also to industries such as networks, construction, manufacturing and finance. He forecast it will become a strategic asset that will shape future national industrial competitiveness and leadership in AI.

Jung said the details of the bottlenecks facing the AI infrastructure industry are also changing. He said that while securing GPUs and power has so far been a key constraint in AIDC competition, “memory capacity” to meet rising large-scale inference demand and “business performance and profit structure” that enable continued investment will become new core competitive factors.

Jung stressed that these changes could become a new opportunity for South Korea, saying, “Korea has competitiveness in memory semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and ICT infrastructure, so if we combine government support, private investment and cross-industry cooperation, we can grow into a key hub in the global ‘AI token factory’ era.”