President Lee Jae Myung interacts with a humanoid robot ahead of a future innovation security strategy meeting held at the Blue House on June 26.JOINT PRESS CORPS
President Lee Jae Myung signaled on Friday that the government may draw up a second supplementary budget this year due to the mounting cost of securing GPUs for Korea's AI drive.
Lee made the comment at a Blue House strategy meeting on fostering future "new security" innovation companies. Lee set a goal of building, by 2030, five firms each worth more than 1 trillion won ($650 million) and 50 generating 100 billion won in revenue.
"Superiority in technology is superiority in security," he said, casting advanced technology as the new arena of national survival.
At the meeting, Lee asked officials how many GPUs Korea had secured. The government has set a target of 260,000 over the long term and 50,000 in the near term.
"It looks like we'll have about 20,000 [GPUs] by the end of this year, and around 10,000 will go into next year's budget," said Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol.
"I hear the national computing center in Gwangju isn't being used properly because of system problems," Lee said. "We'll increasingly need [GPUs] on a large scale, so isn't the pace of securing them too slow? This needs to be made up for."
It was in that exchange that Lee floated the extra budget.
"I'm not sure whether we'll be compiling a supplementary budget soon, but it does seem extra funding [for securing GPUs] is coming up as well," he said.
Lee had hinted at a supplementary budget once before, at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He tied the idea to the surplus tax revenue flowing in from the semiconductor boom.
President Lee Jae Myung interacts with a humanoid robot ahead of a future innovation security strategy meeting held at the Blue House on June 26.JOINT PRESS CORPS
"Even if we lower the fuel tax, the fiscal burden isn't that large. Wouldn't it also help expand ordinary people's spending power?" he said.
He made a similar point on curbing high prices: "If we want to add income-support measures for ordinary people right now, there's no money for it, is there?"
The government compiled a 26.2 trillion won "war supplementary budget" in April to blunt inflation stoked by the war in Iran. A fresh package now would arrive less than three months after that one. It had earlier drawn up a 31.8 trillion won budget in July last year to fund livelihood-recovery coupons.
The Blue House, however, played down the prospect.
"Nothing has been decided on whether to compile a supplementary budget," it said.
Lee's comments, it added, were "principled, general remarks on the need to expand investment that raises growth potential, such as GPU purchases."
President Lee Jae Myung speaks during a Blue House strategy meeting held June 26 in central Seoul.YONHAP
Lee returned to the meeting's core theme.
"A nation's competitiveness for survival comes down to how many technology-holding innovative companies the state has," Lee said at Friday's meeting. "We have to build innovative companies of our own that can stand toe to toe with the United States' Palantir, worth 480 trillion won, and Germany's Helsing, worth 26 trillion won.
He pointed to the country's geopolitical status.
"Korea is a strikingly militarized country by global standards," the President said. "Division is a weakness if you want to call it that, a shackle if you want to call it that, but I think we can turn this kind of risk into an opportunity instead."
When it came down to turning crisis into opportunity, He drew a line from the past to the present.
"The conglomerate-centered hardware weapons system we have also came out of that process of turning crisis into opportunity," Lee said. "Now that the security environment is changing greatly, we have to shift accordingly toward innovative-technology firms and toward advanced weapons systems."
To get there, Lee promised a package of measures: a contract system to spur innovation in non-defense sectors; a new framework for acquiring advanced technology in defense; strategic investment in new-security industries through a Korean version of In-Q-Tel, the nonprofit venture-capital arm the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency set up in 1999 to back emerging technology; support for young talent moving into new-security startups, including the designation of universities built around new-security entrepreneurship; and a pan-government task force, backed by special legislation, to design a new defense-procurement system.
President Lee Jae Myung observes a satellite mockup ahead of a future innovation security strategy meeting at the Blue House on June 26.NEWS1
Lee singled out the rigidity of defense procurement as an obstacle to the speed of R&D.
"In advanced weapons, even six months or a year is honestly too long. By the time you finish R&D and the approval comes through, a newer technology will already exist," he said.
For fast-moving gear such as drones, the country should swap out components or improve performance rather than buy finished products, to avoid wasting money, Lee suggested.
On funding the advanced weapons industry, Lee called for a riskier approach.
"Right now, there is only lending and support, but let's make investments that take on risk. If it fails, it counts as a subsidy; if it succeeds, [the government] takes a kind of equity stake," he said. He also urged closer communication to narrow the gap in understanding between private firms in new security fields and government agencies.
Unusually for an open session, National Intelligence Service Director Lee Jong-seok also attended the meeting.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
