Ha Jung-woo (하정우), a former senior presidential secretary for AI future planning, will return to the government’s AI policy front line as full-time vice chair of the presidential National AI Strategy Committee.

On Aug. 30, President Lee Jae-myung made the appointment.

Ha was appointed as the first senior presidential secretary for AI future planning, a post created in June last year soon after the Lee administration took office, and was responsible for designing national AI policy. He stepped down in April to run in a by-election for the National Assembly seat of Busan Buk-gap. After losing the June by-election, he will take on government AI policy again about four months later.

The full-time vice chair post had been vacant after former vice chair Lim Moon-young resigned to run in a by-election for the National Assembly seat of Gwangju Gwangsan-eul. The National AI Strategy Committee is a presidential AI policy control tower chaired by Lee, reviewing and coordinating the national AI strategy and major policies and checking implementation by each ministry.

Ha, born in Busan in 1977, graduated in computer engineering from Seoul National University and earned a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering at the same university. He worked at Samsung SDS before joining Naver Labs in 2015, and served as head of Naver CLOVA AI Research, director of Naver AI Lab, and head of the AI Innovation Center at Naver Cloud.

At Naver, he led medium- and long-term advanced AI technology research and development of large-scale AI, and was also involved in developing HyperCLOVA X, a Korean large language model (LLM). He has stressed the need for “sovereign AI,” arguing that the country should secure its own models, infrastructure and talent in an AI competition led by global big tech.

After joining the presidential office in June last year, he handled planning and coordination of key policies including the government’s “AI G3” strategy, a standalone AI foundation model, expanded AI computing infrastructure and data centres, and industrial AI transformation. He also chaired the National AI Chief Officers Council under the committee to coordinate AI policies across ministries.

Separately, the National AI Strategy Committee serves as the presidential AI policy control tower, responsible for establishing the national AI strategy, coordinating policies across ministries and discussing the direction of major investments.