South Korea is proposing a record 2027 ICT R&D budget of 2.08 trillion won, boosted by 23.6% from this year to fuel a national push in AI and tech development.

A citizen evaluation panel was introduced in the second phase with limited participation; future efforts should expand real-world usability testing to influence scoring.

Five finalists were named in 2025 for the sovereign AI effort, with NC AI eliminated for output issues and Motif Technologies joining after adjustments when Alibaba’s Qwen components prompted reevaluation.

The president thanked ministries for support and urged National Assembly cooperation to promote healthy, active lifestyles via sports.

The sovereign foundation model is planned for broad consumer, industrial, public sector, and developer use, with consumer services delivered through AI for All.

Upstage is expanding real-world use of its Solar 4 model, which ranked 10th globally in daily token usage on OpenRouter as of mid-August, signaling rapid deployment growth.

A new 2 billion won program will dispatch instructors to depopulated areas to support friendly sports classes for toddlers.

The science ministry intends to invest about 4.7 trillion won (roughly $3.49 billion) to develop a homegrown frontier AI model designed to compete with global leading systems.

Overall AI and flagship projects are set to total 21.3 trillion won ($15.8 billion) in the 2027 budget, aimed at narrowing the gap with the United States and China.

Sovereignty criteria for the frontier AI project emphasize independence in design, implementation, and training, while maintaining ongoing control and management of models and features.

Nota highlights its hardware-diverse optimization and partnerships across Nvidia GPUs, NPUs, CPUs, edge devices, and robotics as a cornerstone of scalable AI infrastructure.

The policy context includes warnings from U.S. and domestic voices about balancing rapid AI growth with safeguards, talent development, and labor-market impacts.