Korean textile chief urges AI and robots to reinvent K-fashion

Korea’s textile industry is not the first place most people think about when discussing AI, but that’s exactly why this speech is interesting. The federation’s chairman is explicitly framing AI and robotics not as incremental tools but as the linchpin of a new ‘intelligent manufacturing’ paradigm spanning fibers, factories and retail.([tnnews.co.kr](https://tnnews.co.kr/archives/264053)) His vision mixes soft exoskeletons for seniors with AI‑driven production planning and data‑rich supply chains, signaling that even legacy heavy industries are now thinking in end‑to‑end, agentic terms.

For the AGI race, this is another example of how the demand side is evolving. As sectors like textiles begin to imagine fully digitized, AI‑coordinated workflows, they create use cases for more general models that can reason about logistics, human ergonomics and consumer demand simultaneously. That, in turn, will reward vendors and labs that can offer robust, multimodal agents rather than narrow point solutions. It also shows how deeply geopolitical competition runs: Korea’s textile leaders are courting Chinese robot and battery makers while positioning K‑fashion as a high‑value export tied to advanced manufacturing, not just design.