President Lee Jae-myung tapped former Blue House senior secretary for AI Future Planning Ha Jung-woo as vice chair of the Presidential Committee on AI. After serving as the inaugural AI senior secretary under the Lee Jae-myung administration and then losing a run in the June 3 by-elections, Ha returns to a role overseeing national AI policy.
Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik held a briefing at the Blue House press center on the 30th and said Ha, the former senior secretary, was named vice chair of the Presidential Committee on AI.
Kang said, "As the inaugural AI senior secretary, Ha's expertise and policy capacity have been proven, and having helped launch the national AI strategy committee, he will take the helm to propel Korea into the world's top three in AI and present a national AI strategy that tightly brings together capabilities across industry, academia, and research."
Born in 1977, Ha graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in computer engineering and earned a doctorate in computer engineering from the same university. After working as a researcher at Samsung SDS, he joined Naver in 2016 and led Clova AI Research, AI Lab, and the Naver Cloud AI Innovation Center, overseeing AI research and business.
In June last year, immediately after taking office, President Lee created the post of senior secretary for AI Future Planning and appointed Ha, then head of the Naver Cloud AI Innovation Center, as the first to the role. Ha has been responsible for the government's AI policy and the establishment of the national AI strategy.
In April, Ha tendered his resignation to the Blue House, joined the Democratic Party of Korea, and ran in the Busan Buk-gu Gap National Assembly by-election held alongside the June 3 local elections.
In the election, he took 41.26% but lost by 1.7 percentage points to independent candidate Han Dong-hoon, who won 42.96%. He has now returned to public office as vice chair of the national AI strategy committee about four months later.