Choi Sang-mok "Establishment of Advanced Strategic Industry Fund"... Minimum Scale of 34 Trillion Won

Yonhap News

Choi Sang-mok, Acting President and Deputy Prime Minister as well as Minister of Strategy and Finance, announced on the 5th, "We will establish an Advanced Strategic Industry Fund at the Korea Development Bank to support cutting-edge industries and technologies such as batteries and bio industries."

On the same day, Acting President Choi held a meeting of the Ministers in Charge of National Affairs, Economic Relations, and Industrial Competitiveness Enhancement at the Government Seoul Office in Jongno-gu, Seoul, stating, "We will promptly prepare specific plans for the establishment of the fund and consult with the National Assembly on the related legislative amendments within March." The fund is planned to be more than twice the size of the semiconductor financial support program, which is worth about 17 trillion won. Support will be provided through various methods such as low-interest loans and equity investments.

Acting President Choi said, "While accelerating the procedures for operating the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Computing Center, we will promptly hold a meeting of the National AI Committee within this month to discuss detailed strategies for advancing to become one of the top three AI powers." He appealed, "Please expedite the processing of the Semiconductor Special Act and laws related to power and energy that the industry needs." He added, "Recently, a Chinese company unveiled the AI model 'DeepSeek R1,' which showed high performance at a low cost, delivering a fresh shock. The global AI competition is likely to expand from a simple infrastructure scale-up competition to a complex competition including software (SW) competitiveness."

Regarding U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policy, he assessed, "The imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico by the U.S. has been postponed by one month, giving us a momentary relief," but added, "Additional tariffs on China are still being implemented, so global trade uncertainties continue, requiring close attention."

On the consumer price inflation rate of 2.2% recorded last month, he explained, "This is the result of rising prices of petroleum products and some agricultural and marine products due to abnormal weather, rising international oil prices, and base effects," and stated, "We will discuss stable price management measures at the Livelihood Economy Inspection Meeting on the 6th."