AI and cloud software corporations Okestro said on the 11th that Chair Kim Min-jun received the Presidential People's Medal for "merit in developing digital government" for contributions to advancing digital government.
Kim received the medal at the "AI national secretary pilot service opening ceremony" held on the 9th at the Pangyo Techno Valley Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy and Innovation. The People's Medal is a national honor awarded to individuals with clear merits in national development and various fields of society. In this round, four people were selected, including one presidential medal recipient and three commendation recipients, and Kim was the only awardee to receive the People's Medal.
Kim was recognized for leading the development of domestic AI and cloud technology and contributing to expanded AI use in the public institutional sector and innovation in digital administration. Okestro has participated in national research and development projects and major AI projects, and is responsible for implementing public-sector Generative AI services in the independent AI foundation model project.
Okestro has expanded its business of replacing foreign-made virtualization solutions in the public, finance, manufacturing, and telecommunications fields through its server virtualization solution "CONTRABASS." In 2025, focusing on projects to transition from VMware environments, related sales surpassed 10 billion won.
It also unveiled a "sovereign AI cloud data center" solution aimed at securing Data Sovereignty and infrastructure control. The solution integrates IaaS, PaaS, DevOps, AIOps, AIaaS, AI platforms, migration, and disaster recovery (DR). Based on this, it is expanding overseas business by building a GPU virtualization-based LLM environment at a Japanese AI data center.
Kim Min-jun said, "It is meaningful that domestic AI and cloud technology has been recognized for contributing to digital government innovation," adding, "We will contribute to strengthening digital sovereignty and enhancing the competitiveness of Korea's AI industry by advancing sovereign AI cloud technology."