AI governance began to emerge as a focal point of discourse in Korea from the mid 2010s. Since then, multiple government and public bodies have released guidelines for AI governance, and various tech companies have announced their own AI ethics and governance principles. Beyond its borders, Korea has also actively participated in efforts to establish international norms and guidelines on AI governance. These developments were in part propelled by events that increased public awareness of the importance of trustworthy AI. This has also led to numerous legislative proposals that purport to increase technical and legal checks on such systems. At the same time, Korea has maintained its emphasis on the promotion of new technologies as a fundamental principle of legislative policy. Pursuing the dual goals of spurring innovation in the field of AI while at the same time ensuring its safety has led to confusion and, in some cases, incongruity within the AI governance framework in Korea. The Korean experience sheds light on factors that can influence the trajectory of a jurisdiction's AI governance, including public awareness of AI's potential for both benefit and harm, and the existing legislative and policy framework for governing technology.
Keywords:
As artificial intelligence (AI) technology begins to permeate all aspects of our lives, pressing questions are being raised about the governance of AI systems. These include how to ensure the explainability of AI systems involved in making decisions that affect people’s lives, how to prevent AI systems from extending or perpetuating societal prejudices and biases, and whom to hold accountable when things go wrong (Coeckelbergh Citation2020; Crawford Citation2021; O’Neil Citation2017). In response, there has been a groundswell of interest in ethics principles and governance frameworks that purport to deal with such challenges, and there is now a pivot toward more concrete legislation that would directly address these concerns. A notable example of the latter is the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) adopted by the European Union (EU), which seeks to regulate a broad spectrum of AI systems in alignment with EU values and its fundamental rights-based approach to regulating new technologies (Council of the European Union Citation2023).
The Republic of Korea (Korea) has also allocated significant policy resources to ensure and bolster the trustworthiness of AI systems. As we describe in more detail later, a national AI strategy was announced in 2019, followed by the government’s introduction of ethical standards in 2020, which set forth the essential components of trustworthy AI and key strategies to achieve them.Footnote1
