2026: Korea Launches AI's 'Third Growth Engine' via Megaprojects

The government has declared a monumental leap for the nation's future. The 'Three Major Megaprojects'—integrating semiconductors, AI data centers, and physical AI—serve as a new growth engine for an era facing low birth rates and an aging population, while also acting as a national industrial strategy to redesign the future of Korea. As traditional growth methods reach their limits due to demographic shifts, a virtuous cycle where semiconductors handle AI computation, data centers provide learning and operational infrastructure, and physical AI applies these technologies on-site has been proposed as the core of the national industrial strategy.

Yoo Min-hee, a research fellow at the Korea Economic Research Institute, diagnosed that this interconnected structure of the three major projects can boost productivity. Korea possesses the dominant market share of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix in the HBM market, as well as a world-class manufacturing base in automobiles, shipbuilding, and batteries. Based on these strengths, Research Fellow Yoo analyzed that Korea can position itself as both an AI infrastructure provider and a testbed for physical AI.

Companies have identified the unpredictability of investment schedules due to regulatory uncertainty—stemming from related tasks such as power, water supply, permits, and environmental assessments being scattered across multiple ministries—as a major bottleneck. To resolve this, Research Fellow Yoo proposed the establishment of a control tower dedicated to national strategic industries to provide one-stop support and ensure policy consistency as a precondition for the project's success.