From AI Development to Ecosystem Building... Industry, Academia, Research, and Government Join Forces

Launch of the "Agentic AI Alliance"

Divisions for Industry, Technology, Ecosystem, and Safety

Solving the Supply-Demand Mismatch

Plans to Establish Korean Guidelines

"Even if we have the technology, we will fall behind unless an industrialization environment is established amid the intensifying global competition for agentic artificial intelligence (AI). A structural breakthrough through a public-private alliance is urgently needed." (Kim Geonsu, Head of NC AI)

With the arrival of the AI era in which systems can make independent judgments and take autonomous actions, the "Agentic AI Alliance," a public-private consultative body aimed at advancing the national AI agent ecosystem, was officially launched on April 1. Although South Korea boasts world-class information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and a strong manufacturing and service industry base, the lack of standards and regulations related to agentic AI has created limitations for individual companies. As a result, there is a pressing need to form a public-private united front to build a robust ecosystem. Accordingly, the government plans to actively address the establishment of data governance and regulatory gaps raised by industry stakeholders and to promote standardization through the formation of the Agentic AI Alliance.

The launch ceremony for the Agentic AI Alliance, held by the Ministry of Science and ICT at Altower in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the previous day, drew the participation of as many as 177 companies and organizations, demonstrating significant interest. The government is determined to resolve the challenges facing the industry one by one through the Agentic AI Alliance, which encompasses the entire cycle from technology development and industrial application to ecosystem building and the securing of safety and trust.

On the day of the event, Ryu Jemyung, Second Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT, stated, "The Alliance is a national-level strategic cooperation platform that covers everything from technology development and industrial application to ensuring safety. We will rapidly establish pilot projects for agentic AI tailored to each industry, secure interoperability, and build robust safety evaluation and reliability verification systems."

The Agentic AI Alliance is organized into four main divisions: ▲Industry ▲Technology ▲Ecosystem ▲Safety & Trust. The Industry Division is headed by Shin Donghoon, Director of the NC AI AX Tech Center, with operational support from the National IT Industry Promotion Agency. The greatest current challenge faced by the industry is the mismatch between supply and demand. There is a strong intention to adopt agentic AI, but demand-side companies lack a clear starting point, and supply-side companies are isolated due to the absence of references (case studies). Therefore, there is an urgent need to connect these two groups. Kim Geonsu, Head of NC AI, said, "Our top priority will be figuring out how to connect demand and supply companies," adding, "We also plan to develop a checklist and guidelines that companies can use when implementing AI agents."

Ryu Jemyung, Vice Minister of Science and ICT, delivers the opening remarks at the launch ceremony of the Agentic AI Alliance held on the 1st at Altower in Seocho-gu, Seoul. Courtesy of the Ministry of Science and ICT. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

The Technology Division is led by Jeon Gijeong, Head of Service Development at LG AI Research, with operational support from the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP). As technical standards and protocols for interoperability—such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) communication—continue to evolve, the division will analyze domestic and international technology trends and discuss ways to optimize agentic AI execution structures and architectures. Jeon stated, "It is necessary to develop benchmark sets tailored to South Korea to enhance agent performance," and added, "We will collaborate with the government to discuss optimization technologies, data pipelines, benchmarks, and architecture security."

The Ecosystem Division is headed by Kim Sewoong, Vice President of AI Communication and AI Synergy at Kakao, with operational support from the National Information Society Agency. The division plans to secure a variety of high-demand AI agents and tools and to establish responsibility structures for each service type. Kim emphasized, "The agentic AI ecosystem is about connecting many services known as AI agents so they can achieve their goals together," and added, "It is important to build a cooperative structure where no one dominates but everyone coexists and aligns their business models."

The Safety & Trust Division is led by Choi Daeseon, Head of the AI Safety Research Center at Soongsil University, with operational support from the Korea Information and Communication Technology Association and the AI Safety Research Institute. This division aims to establish systems for evaluating the safety and verifying the reliability of agentic AI. Professor Choi warned, "There are risks that automated agents may abuse their authority or cause cascading errors," and added, "If safety and trust are not ensured, the entire alliance will fail."

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to continuously expand the consultative body to include agentic AI-related companies and institutions interested in participating, starting with the 258 companies and organizations that attended the event. Vice Minister Ryu added, "The Ministry of Science and ICT will strengthen industry-academia-research-government cooperation centered on the Alliance to enhance the global competitiveness of our companies and ensure that agentic AI leads to tangible changes in the daily lives of our people."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.