"The era has come when the competitiveness of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) data centers directly determines Korea's AI competitiveness."
Director Park Yoon-gyu of the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) said this in a welcome address at SMARTCLOUD SHOW 2026, the country's largest tech conference, held on the 26th at the Westin Josun Hotel in Jung District, Seoul, noting that "Korea is now preparing for a sweeping transformation across society centered on artificial intelligence (AI)." NIPA is a co-organizer of the event.
He noted that at the end of June, the government announced the "Korea Great Leap Forward 3 Mega Projects," spanning semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centers, and presented a vision to secure unparalleled global competitiveness to build an irreplaceable Korea.
Park said, "As we rapidly evolve into an era of 'autonomous AI agents' that judge and act on their own and 'physical AI' where robots and devices combine to directly control the real world, cloud sits at the center of this vast innovation."
He added, "If cloud once remained a simple IT infrastructure for data storage or expense reduction, today it has taken root as the core foundation that enables AI to learn, reason, and be implemented on real industrial sites," and "without cloud, which flexibly connects large-scale computing resources and data, as well as stable networks and security, AI and Robotics technologies are hard to realize into real-world value."
Park said, "I hope today's event will serve as a valuable venue for exchange and cooperation that confirms new possibilities for Korea's AI and cloud industries and helps build the future together."