Parties place AI at center of local election pledges

Autonomous "RoVOTE" election promotion robots drive along a sidewalk in Seoul, May 19. Serving as more than mobile billboards, the Gangnam District election commission says QR codes displayed on the robots allow passersby to instantly check early voting locations and candidates’ campaign pledges on their smartphones. Yonhap

Parties across Korea’s political spectrum are putting artificial intelligence (AI) at the heart of their campaign promises for the June 3 local elections, signaling a rare consensus that AI will shape everything from growth policy to welfare and public administration.

Every parliamentary party now mentions AI in its official top 10 pledges, with candidates tailoring campaign promises to suit each region, though with different emphases. Proposals range from attracting a United Nations AI center to building AI-based administrative systems and expanding AI-enabled safety nets for older adults.

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) lists its overall AI vision as one of the top three policy priorities of its candidates, promising to deploy the technology to fully realize the nation’s potential and improve public services.

The centerpiece of the party’s plan is using AI not only for economic growth but also in core regional functions such as education and infrastructure. The party says it will help its candidates, if elected, build AI-powered infrastructure by massively expanding computing capacity and data centers — or what it calls an “AI expressway” — enabling universities, research institutes, industry and the state to run advanced AI systems more quickly and at scale. It also pledges to apply AI to classroom teaching as part of a broader push to weave it into everyday public services.

Some candidates are testing more concrete, locally focused versions of “AI for all.” On Jeju Island, the DPK's gubernatorial candidate, Wi Seong-gon, proposed what he calls “universal AI welfare.” If elected, the Wi-led provincial government would sign integrated contracts for AI services or distribute AI vouchers accessible to all residents on the island.

Similarly, incumbent Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, running for reelection on the main opposition People Power Party's (PPP) ticket, has pledged to provide generative AI use passes to 500,000 young people, presenting AI tools as “new ladders of opportunity.”

Other DPK pledges include bringing a U.N.-affiliated AI center to Korea and building wider international cooperation networks around the technology, with mayoral candidates in cities such as Gwangju and Seoul each vowing to host the hub in their own jurisdictions.

For its part, the PPP says its candidates, if elected, will strengthen AI literacy by expanding AI-themed learning content through Educational Broadcasting System-style self-directed study platforms and public institutions, casting basic AI skills as part of its push to widen access to quality education and nurture young experts.

In Ulsan, PPP mayoral candidate Kim Doo-gyeom has made “completing the AI capital” his flagship pledge, promising to expand SK-Amazon Web Services AI data centers, drive an AI transformation of core manufacturing industries and develop an underwater data center pilot project among other AI initiatives.

The Reform Party, a conservative group led by a young, Harvard-educated politician, leans hardest into AI as a tool for governance and daily life infrastructure, with public safety as the sharpest edge of that agenda.

The party lays out plans for AI-driven “smart safety cities” that use video analysis to detect violence, intrusions, fire incidents, traffic accidents and other emergencies in real time. It also vows “AI-based administrative innovation” built around a 24-hour system that lets algorithms process simple complaints.

The party's Busan mayoral candidate, Jeong I-han, promised to turn the city into a tech-driven entertainment hub by seeking to bring a “Netflix House” experience center to its North Port, building a global filming base in Gijang County and creating a postproduction cluster in Centum focused on AI, visual effects, computer graphics and sound.

Among the smaller progressive parties, AI appears less as a slogan for growth and more as something that must be tightly governed and steered toward social goals.

The Justice Party and Social Democratic Party both warned that unchecked AI adoption could deepen inequality and reinforce corporate platform power, and called for stronger public control over data, platform regulation and algorithmic transparency. The Rebuilding Korea Party, for its part, said it would focus on dealing with the fallout from AI and robot adoption, urging local governments to take the lead in managing job losses by building a “just” transition system that prioritizes mass layoff prevention, support and retraining.

At the same time, these parties do not reject AI outright. The Social Democratic Party, for instance, recognized that every citizen should have access to AI and be able to build AI skills in order to cope with industrial transformation while protecting employees from the worst effects of technological change.