South Korea targets ' highest performance' sovereign AI model

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung unveiled the country's largest ever budget, with 2027 spending rising 12.8% to 820.9 trillion won ($610.14 billion), including 21.3 trillion won for semiconductors, physical AI and AI data centers, nearly double the 2026 level. A separate 4.7 trillion won will go toward developing a sovereign AI model that Lee described as having the "world's highest performance," alongside training 2,000 semiconductor specialists and expanding AI education. Lee said the higher spending would result in "virtually no net increase in government debt," with defense expenditure rising 8.2% to 73.3 trillion won.