Mr. Kim Yong-beom - Chief Policy Officer of the President of South Korea - proposed that the country should build a "national dividend" policy to repay people the outstanding tax revenue generated from industries related to artificial intelligence (AI) that are booming in South Korea.
The achievement of the AI infrastructure era is not only the result of the efforts of individual businesses, but is built on the industrial foundation that the whole country has accumulated over the past half century" - Mr. Kim Yong-beom shared.
Mentioning Norway's national asset fund established in the 1990s to bring oil revenue back to society, he said that the principle of bringing broad benefits to society should also be applied to the profits that South Korea earns from AI.
Part of those achievements should be systematically returned to all citizens. That is the legitimacy and principle of the new policy design," said the Chief of the Presidential Policy Office of South Korea.
He also suggested some ways to use this fund, such as supporting startup assets for young people, basic income for rural areas, supporting artists, supplementing pensions for the elderly or training transformation in the AI era.
His assessment was made in the context of increasing public debate about how South Korean businesses such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix should share huge operating profits when global demand for AI-related products, including high-performance memory chips, increased sharply. Shares of these two companies have increased by more than 200% in the past 6 months, continuously recording record revenue.
South Korean media reported that Mr. Kim Yong-beom's statement also reflects a broader assessment of the changes in the country's industrial structure. He said that South Korea is transitioning from a traditional cyclical export economy to a "technology monopoly economy", based on South Korea's position as one of the few countries capable of producing high-demand products across the value chain of semiconductor memory chips, batteries and displays.
This is not simply an issue of industrial competitiveness. In an era where supply chain sovereignty has become a key variable in national strategy, such production capacity is synonymous with geopolitical leverage. As AI infrastructure expands globally, the strategic importance of the Korean industrial ecosystem will also increase," he noted.
This proposed policy is in line with the "basic social" vision of President Lee Jae Myung's administration, which aims to ensure a minimum living standard for all people.
Mr. Kim Yong-beom believes that the distribution of added value in the AI era is not simply a matter of income redistribution, but also a way to deal with structural inequality.
He warned that profits from AI risk deepening the "K-shaped" polarization in Korean society, as one group of people is increasingly rising while another group lags behind.
The model that we think, debate and build in advance may eventually become a standard for countries in the AI era," he wrote.
