Baek Gyeong-hoon (배경훈), deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT, visited the Seoul Smart Shelter Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday to review its operations and hear difficulties raised by professional counsellors.

The Smart Shelter Center provides professional counselling and prevention education to address smartphone overdependence. Professional counsellors are stationed there to support users’ healthy smartphone use. A total of 18 centres are operating across 17 provinces and major cities nationwide.

Baek toured the centre’s waiting room, counselling rooms and play-therapy room, and looked into how counselling services are delivered. He also listened to difficulties and suggestions from counsellors in the field.

Baek said that as digital technology becomes more deeply embedded in daily life, the ability to use it in a healthy and safe way is also becoming more important. He said the Smart Shelter Center and its counsellors are becoming a mainstay helping people maintain a healthy digital life.

The ministry will strengthen cooperation with local governments, schools and related organisations and expand education and counselling to prevent negative side effects of digital technology. It will also fully operate a digital detox programme that helps users overcome smartphone overdependence on their own through meditation, arts, sports activities and professional counselling.

It will also analyse, from a medium- to long-term perspective, the impact of AI use on life and development. The ministry plans to use the results of related policy research in future prevention education and counselling programmes.

Baek said efforts to find balance in life, along with using professional institutions when needed, help promote a healthy digital life. He said he would support everyone so they can enjoy AI and digital technology in a healthy way.