South Korea
2 items across 1 edition. First seen Mon 2 Nov, last seen Mon 2 Nov.
- CNBC reported on 2 November that President Lee Jae Myung told the National Assembly defence spending in the 2027 budget is set to "rise 8.2% to 73.3 trillion won." Lee said the aim is a "hybrid manned and unmanned system based on AI, robots, and drones."
- The defence line sits inside a budget CNBC says would "rise 12.8% to 820.9 trillion won" ($610.14 billion) in total, with 21.3 trillion won for semiconductors, physical AI and AI data centres and a separate 4.7 trillion won for a sovereign AI model.
- This is a budget proposal that still needs National Assembly passage, and the speech gave no programme-level detail on what the unmanned systems would be or when they would field. Figures differ slightly across outlets: Korea Herald's Yonhap copy renders the sovereign-AI allocation as 4.6 trillion won.
- The Seoul Economic Daily reported on 2 November at 10:28 KST that President Lee Jae-myung's 2027 budget would "pour 21.3 trillion won into the three mega-projects" — semiconductors, physical AI and AI data centres — which it says is nearly double this year's level. Inside that, it gives 2 trillion won to expand chip production capacity, a further 2.1 trillion won for power, water and industrial-complex infrastructure, and 500 billion won for physical-AI field demonstrations in eight sectors.
- AsiaOne, carrying the speech the same day, quotes Lee: "We will invest 21.3 trillion won (S$20.4 billion), nearly twice this year's amount". It puts total proposed spending up "12.8 per cent next year to 820.9 trillion won", with a 162.3 trillion won Future Response Fund financed largely by additional tax revenue from the semiconductor boom, and exports of $930 billion from January to October against an annual target of US$1 trillion.
- A separate 4.7 trillion won goes to frontier AI development with the stated goal of bringing homegrown models to the top tier of global performance, per the Seoul Economic Daily, which also gives a record 39.5 trillion won R&D budget and 13.8 trillion won for "NEXT 10" strategic technologies.
- The budget is a proposal that still requires National Assembly review, and currency conversions differ across outlets — AsiaOne gives S$20.4 billion for the 21.3 trillion won while other outlets convert it to about $15.97 billion. Korea Herald's Yonhap copy renders the frontier-AI line as 4.6 trillion won rather than 4.7 trillion.