At ICNX 2026 in Incheon on Nov. 4, Samseog Ko called for Korea to unite K-content promotion and AI development in one national strategy, arguing that AI needs compelling content to compete globally and can, in turn, boost content production and reach.

The stakes are significant: Korea’s content industry generated 161.48 trillion won in 2025 and set an export record of $14.91 billion.

AI adoption is growing, with generative AI used by 32.1% of Korean content companies in the fourth quarter of 2025—four times the level in the first half of 2023—and by 70% of game companies. Businesses most often sought funding for AI-based production (57.1%), followed by specialist training (26.9%) and protections against job displacement (22.6%).

Still, among companies that had not adopted AI, 56.1% cited difficulty getting satisfactory results as the main obstacle.

Ko pointed to different international models: the United States pairs AI investment with content intellectual property, China is scaling AI content and microdramas, and the United Kingdom has put creative technology, or Createch, into its industrial strategy. In 2025, private AI investment was $285.9 billion in the United States, $12.4 billion in China and $5.9 billion in the U.K.; China’s microdrama industry exceeded 100 billion yuan that year and released 490,000 new titles in the first nine months of 2026.

Ko warned that policy cycles are lagging behind the technology: government budgets generally run annually, while AI changes about every six months. He urged Korea to move beyond applying AI to existing production and distribution and instead build new AI-based K-culture industries and co-produce with overseas partners.

Korea’s February 2026 AI Action Plan includes four culture-related items, numbered 70–73, covering AI-enabled content creation, AI transformation of the K-culture industry, early AI adoption and taking K-content and Korean AI overseas. The government has proposed a 9.42 trillion won AI budget for 2027, an 84.3% increase, with National Assembly review through early December serving as an early test of whether the strategy will bring concrete support.

The broader policy challenge is to coordinate the culture and science ministries’ separate budgets, make funding responsive to AI’s pace and develop domestic production tools and data capabilities instead of relying only on licensing deals; co-production could also help Korea compete while responding to rising negative perceptions of Hallyu abroad.

Ko’s proposed “coevolution” model would replace one-way exports with international partnerships involving joint planning, production and investment, as well as shared creative authority and intellectual property. He has presented versions of the proposal at events and meetings in Singapore, Las Vegas, Malaysia, Qingdao and Orlando.

Ko is scheduled to discuss AI’s impact on the content business with Seoul National University professor emeritus Kim Nan-do at the AI Content Festival in Seoul on Nov. 12.