[DigitalToday reporter Jin-ho Lee] The government has finalised the “South Korea AI Action Plan” to embed artificial intelligence (AI) across the country and society. It also approved the “AI Government Infrastructure Governance and Innovation Promotion Direction” to redesign the national information management system, and the “K-Moonshot Promotion Strategy” to accelerate national science and technology innovation using AI.

The National AI Strategy Committee held its second plenary meeting at Seoul Square on Tuesday and deliberated and approved five agenda items, including the South Korea AI Action Plan (2026-2028).

The newly approved AI action plan was finalised after supplementing details following a report to a cabinet meeting on Feb. 10, and is a statutory plan under the AI Basic Act. The committee prepared a draft over 100 days and finalised it after briefings for 330 institutions and organisations, among other steps.

The plan sets a vision of “advancing to become one of the world’s three leading AI powers”. It is built on three policy pillars and 12 strategic areas: fostering an AI innovation ecosystem, a nationwide major transformation based on AI, and contributing to a global AI basic society.

Key tasks include legal and institutional improvements that combine copyright protection with promoting AI use; introducing a system to remove security vulnerabilities in cooperation with white-hat hackers; establishing governance linking private and public AI and data policies; revising laws to provide welfare benefits based on AI and data without citizens having to apply; and drawing up a plan to promote an AI basic society based on social deliberation.

The meeting also approved the direction for innovation in AI government infrastructure governance. The government plans to strengthen safety standards for government and public-sector data centres to at least private-sector levels and to close the Daejeon centre of the National Information Resources Service by 2030 after it reaches limits in disaster response capability and capacity.

It will establish direction for building a disaster recovery (DR) system, including setting recovery objective standards by system type based on impact on people’s daily lives. It will pursue a plan to move classified data to government and public data centres and to shift sensitive and open data to private cloud services according to data importance.

This year it will first build DR systems for 134 of the 693 systems at the Daejeon centre. It will 추진 a leading project to build private cloud-based DR focused on three key systems: dBrain, the Postal Information System and Safety Stepping Stone.

It also approved a draft “K-Moonshot Promotion Strategy” for AI-based science and technology innovation. Centered on the National Science AI Research Center, it will integrate key science and technology AI resources such as research data, GPUs, AI models and autonomous laboratories, and build a triangular cooperation system among industry, academia and research institutes. The government aims to combine AI with 12 national missions across eight areas by 2035, including advanced bio, future energy, physical AI, space, materials, AI scientists, semiconductors and quantum, and solve them.

The committee also finalised a roadmap to introduce a “security vulnerability reporting, action and disclosure system” under which white-hat hackers can continuously report security vulnerabilities and institutions will take action and disclose them. This year it will run a pilot project led by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Intelligence Service, and push for legislation after expanding participation in 2027.

Separately, the committee will create an AI democracy subcommittee to hold in-depth discussions on matters such as governance development in the AI era and national integration. It will also create an education and talent subcommittee by integrating the talent segment of the existing science and talent subcommittee with an education task force. It also plans to launch a legal task force made up of legal experts to present government-wide legislative directions.

Deputy Prime Minister and Science and ICT Minister Kyung-hoon Bae (배경훈) said, “Centered on the National AI Strategy Committee, the public and private sectors have put in their full effort to build the foundation for the top three AI powers.” He added, “Now it is important that all ministries cooperate in earnest to produce tangible results.”

Moon-young Lim (임문영), the committee’s standing vice chair, said, “Through today’s approvals of key policies, the direction the government will pursue has been made concrete.” He added, “The committee will spare no effort in the necessary policy coordination and support.”