ROUNDTABLE Korea urged to engage with both US, China on AI, but draw clear lines

With artificial intelligence (AI) emerging as a fiercely contested front in the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, Korea faces a growing dilemma.

The country is caught between Washington's dominance in frontier AI technologies and China's growing presence in the consumer market with open-weight and open-source models.

To explore how Korea should navigate this geopolitical landscape, The Korea Times hosted a roundtable titled “Beyond U.S.-China AI race: Korea’s strategic edge,” which included the country’s leading experts.

Participants included Kim Sung-han, former national security adviser and Korea University professor emeritus; Reform Party of Korea Rep. Lee Jun-seok; Lim Jong-in, former presidential cybersecurity adviser and Soongsil University AI committee chair; and Bone AI CEO Lee Do-kyung. Korea Times President-Publisher Oh Young-jin moderated the discussion.

Kim stressed that Korea should distinguish between consumer AI and technologies used for national security, calling for high-level consultations between Cheong Wa Dae and the White House to define the scope of cooperation with China.

“Under the ‘small yard, high fence’ strategy, Korea can cooperate with China outside narrowly defined areas involving critical technologies,” Kim said. “But realistically, Seoul needs to consult Washington to ensure such cooperation does not violate U.S. export controls.

“This can be interpreted that cooperation with China is possible in areas other than the most advanced AI technologies that could be used for military purposes or the development of artificial general intelligence.”

The comments reflect the recognition that while Korea hopes to become the world's third-largest AI powerhouse, it remains a distant third behind the U.S. and China in terms of technological capabilities, with the gap in frontier AI models and other most advanced technologies becoming increasingly difficult to narrow.

“If we say the world's frontier AI model development capabilities add up to 100 percent, the U.S. would account for 50, China 40 and the rest of the world would share the remaining 10, with each country claiming to be No. 3,” Lim said.

“However, the U.S. remains overwhelmingly dominant in development. China has caught up to about 90 percent of the U.S. level with models such as DeepSeek and Qwen, but U.S. equipment restrictions and sluggish domestic demand constrain its ability to develop and deploy AI models.”

Lim said U.S. efforts to exclude China from its supply chains create opportunities for Korea in memory chips, power infrastructure and energy storage systems. However, he stressed the need for de-risking measures reflecting Korean businesses' interests, given the possibility of Chinese retaliation, such as the dispute over the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.

Rep. Lee also warned against excluding China in pursuit of closer cooperation with the U.S. He noted that Chinese AI models offer overwhelming cost advantages, particularly in inference, making it increasingly likely that China will dominate the consumer AI market.

“The U.S. will never share technologies tied to its core national interests, even with its closest allies, just as it refuses to sell the F-22 fighter jet while still offering the F-16 or F-18,” Lee said.

“And China is also unlikely to challenge Korea by developing AI models comparable to the F-22, and the two countries are unlikely to compete directly in many global markets. Ultimately, the question is whether to share AI supply chains with China. … We should open up areas that do not involve core national interests or critical technology leaks.”

Lee Do-kyung also stressed the need for Korea to find areas where it can build its own competitive advantages rather than compete directly with U.S. developers of frontier AI models. The CEO pointed to Korea's manufacturing capabilities and industry-specific operational knowledge as potential strengths.

However, participants warned that it would be overly ambitious for Korea to seek cooperation with both countries wherever it sees potential benefits, stressing the need to draw clear boundaries between areas open to cooperation with China and those involving critical security interests.

One example cited by the participants was the Maven Smart System, a U.S. military AI platform developed by Palantir Technologies, which played a key role in the U.S. military campaign against Iran by dramatically accelerating the process of identifying, prioritizing and striking targets, helping U.S. forces hit more than 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours of the operation.

Like the F-22, Maven is considered a technology Washington is unlikely to share with Seoul, while participants said China was unlikely to develop comparable AI-powered command-and-control capabilities soon.

Kim said Korea should take such technological gaps into account when discussing the transfer of wartime operational control from the U.S., arguing that Seoul should use its integration with U.S. military systems and standards as an opportunity to learn from American technology and strengthen its own capabilities before the transfer.

Rep. Lee also raised similar concerns, warning that Korea's existing defense posture could become vulnerable if North Korea develops an effective AI-powered command system ahead of Seoul or acquires such technology from China or Russia.