Kim Yongbeom: "AI Is Not About Coding but an 'Electricity War'... It Must Be Elevated to National Strategic Infrastructure"

Korea's Memory Edge: "World-Class Cooking Equipment We May Not Use in Our Own Kitchen"
The Key Question: "Can We Supply Power at the Scale and Speed AI Demands?"
"A Watershed That Will Decide Whether We Become a 'Producer of Intelligence'"

Kim Yongbeom, policy chief at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, stated that "Artificial intelligence (AI) is now a war over 'electricity', not 'coding'," and said that the power grid should be elevated to a national strategic infrastructure.

Yonhap News Agency

In a Facebook post on the 17th, Kim stressed that "AI is no longer an abstract software industry, but a massive equipment-based industry." He assessed that in the AI era, as technological gaps narrow rapidly, the center of scarce competitiveness is shifting from algorithms to "physical resources" such as computing resources and electricity. He went on to write, "What is scarce now is not code, but physical resources such as graphics processing units (GPUs), memory, electricity, and transmission networks."

Referring to Korea's memory competitiveness, Kim posed the question, "What will happen if SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics' high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is mounted on Nvidia GPUs and shipped off to overseas data centers, while we fail to build sufficiently large AI computing clusters at home?" He added an analogy that "we could end up in a situation where we manufacture world-class cooking equipment but cannot use it properly in our own kitchen."

He continued, "It is not that Korea lacks electricity, but the question is whether we can supply power at the scale and speed that AI requires," adding that it is necessary to address not only the expansion of generation facilities, but also transmission and distribution networks, site selection, and the speed of permitting processes. He said that unless the principle of producing and consuming electricity in the same region (local production and local consumption) is clearly established, and the system is changed so that power-producing regions share in industrial benefits, conflicts over power transmission could recur. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers accounted for about 1.5% (approximately 415 TWh) of global electricity consumption in 2024, and due to the spread of AI and other factors, data center power demand could more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030.

Kim stressed that "the 12th Basic Plan for Long-term Electricity Supply and Demand and the restructuring of the power industry are not mere energy policies," calling them a watershed that will determine whether Korea remains an "importer of intelligence" or makes a leap to become a "producer of intelligence." It appears to reaffirm the intention to proceed as planned with the construction of two large nuclear power plants under the 11th Basic Plan and to continue energy policies aligned with industrial demand, including AI data centers.

Meanwhile, institutional improvements are underway to ensure the timely expansion of the power grid. In the National Assembly, bills related to "expansion of the national backbone power grid" have been discussed and processed, including the establishment of a committee under the Prime Minister, as well as improvements to permitting and compensation procedures, in order to respond to large-scale power demand from semiconductor clusters, AI, and the data industry. In the industry, there is also a view that projects such as the West Coast high-voltage direct current (HVDC) line, an "energy expressway" that serves as a key axis linking renewable energy sources with demand in the Seoul metropolitan area, are being pushed forward, and that the speed of project awards and construction progress will be critical.