South Korea amends AI Basic Act ahead of January 2026 rollout

South Korea is quietly turning its AI Basic Act into one of the most comprehensive national AI frameworks in the world, and this first amendment locks in that trajectory. By elevating the National AI Strategy Committee into a stronger “control tower” and explicitly tasking it with coordinating industrial promotion, public-sector deployment, and support for vulnerable groups, Seoul is betting on a highly centralized model for steering AI. That stands in contrast to the more fragmented, sector-by-sector approaches in the US and EU.([etnews.com](https://www.etnews.com/20251230000330))

For the race to AGI, this matters less as a direct technical accelerator and more as a template. Korea wants to be one of the top three AI powers, and it’s wiring that ambition into statute: coordinated data policy, startup support, and state-backed demand creation in areas like healthcare and transportation. If the Basic Act and its amendment successfully de-risk high‑impact deployments while keeping compliance light-touch, it could offer a model for how mid‑sized economies can stay competitive with US–China scale advantages without smothering innovation.([seoul.co.kr](https://www.seoul.co.kr/news/plan/behindAI/2025/03/06/20250306009002?utm_source=openai))

The flip side is that over‑centralization can become a single point of failure. If the decree that operationalizes this amendment leans too hard into vague notions of “high-impact AI” without clear guidance, it could chill experimentation in precisely the sectors Korea wants to turbo‑charge. How regulators treat foundation models, multi‑agent systems, and embodied AI under this framework will be closely watched by regional peers.