The government will push a national-level "K-moonshot" project to strengthen science and technology competitiveness in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). It plans to reorganize research and development (R&D) around national missions by pooling dispersed research resources and capabilities, and to deliver results through a private expert–led operating system.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said on the 25th that the National AI Strategy Committee approved the "K-moonshot promotion strategy" at its second plenary meeting.
The government set a goal of doubling the share of top 1% most-cited papers from 4.1% to 8.2% by 2030. By 2035, it will seek to solve 12 national missions across eight sectors by leveraging science and technology AI.
The core is building a "national science AI integrated platform." The government will provide integrated support for AI-dedicated research data, graphics processing units (GPUs), AI models, autonomous laboratories, and AI agents, and plans to secure more than 8,000 GPUs for science and technology AI by utilizing capacity including the sixth supercomputer.
It will also open research data from government-funded institutes and institutes of science and technology, and establish data standardization and sharing incentive systems. In six sectors—bio, materials, secondary batteries, semiconductors and displays, earth science, and mathematics—it will invest 464 billion won to develop science-specialized AI foundation models.
As candidates for national missions, 12 tasks in eight sectors—advanced bio, future energy, physical AI, space, materials, AI scientist, semiconductors, and quantum—were proposed. The government plans to finalize the missions next month after expert review and interagency consultations.
The K-moonshot will be run under a private program director (PD)–centered model. PDs for each mission will oversee coordination of existing projects, planning of new large-scale R&D, and integrated coordination of projects and budgets, and the government will also push to enact a special law to support this.
Bae Kyung-hoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "Since the launch of the administration, by rallying all-out efforts from the public and private sectors around the National AI Strategy Committee, Korea has laid the foundation to be among the top three in AI," adding, "Now is the time to specify tasks that the public can feel and to implement them with speed, so it is important that all ministries cooperate to produce tangible results in earnest."