The National Strategic Technology SUMMIT 2025, hosted by the Future Dialogue on National Strategic Technologies and supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MOEF), was held on Thursday, December 18, at the COEX Auditorium in Seoul. The summit was intended to present the action plan and implementation roadmap drawn up by the public-private platform, launched in April, to advance national strategic technologies.

Held under the slogan, “A New Era Opened by National Strategic Technologies, NEXT One KOREA,” the event drew about 1,000 participants from industry, academia, and research circles. The slogan reflected the goal of identifying NEXT—New, Emerging, and eXponential Technology—fields among next-generation emerging technologies capable of driving new industries through exponential growth. Those in attendance included Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Kyunghoon Bae; Min-hee Choi, Chair of the National Assembly Committee on Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications; National Assembly members Hyun Kim of the Democratic Party of Korea and Hyung-du Choi of the People Power Party; Ja-Kyun Koo, Chairman of the Korea Industrial Technology Association (KOITA); and RYU Hong Lim, President of Seoul National University.

From left: Min-hee Choi, Chair of the National Assembly Committee on Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications, and lawmakers Hyun Kim and Hyung-du Choi deliver congratulatory remarks.

The summit opened with a vision declaration ceremony under the banner, “A Great Leap Toward a Science and Technology Powerhouse Through Strategic Technologies,” followed by a keynote address from Bae. He said Korea must secure strategic technologies to lead the AI transition, take the initiative in trade and security, and realize future innovation. Stressing that global competition for technological supremacy is spreading beyond artificial intelligence to the broader science and technology landscape, he argued that technological innovation is the only way to reverse such headwinds as slowing economic growth and weakening potential growth. He added the United States has already begun using AI to accelerate scientific and technological innovation through initiatives such as the “Genesis Mission,” signaling an era in which advances in one strategic technology help drive breakthroughs in others. With China also gaining ground in AI-driven industrial transformation and physical AI, he said Korea must now move beyond deliberation and into action.

Vision declaration ceremony

Korea ranks roughly second in the world in R&D spending as a share of GDP, but its total investment remains limited in absolute terms, Bae said. More money alone will not close that gap, he said, arguing that Korea must secure world-leading technologies and make harder choices about where to focus. As part of that push, Seoul is overhauling its list of 50 strategic technologies and preparing a Korean-style “Genesis Mission.” The broader plan calls for a pan-government innovation pipeline built around national missions, tying together ministry-level management systems, sector-specific legislation and policy tools.

Officials also plan to set up an AI-based early warning system for strategic technologies and ease the burden on companies joining core national strategic-technology R&D projects by capping the corporate matching requirement at about 50%. Another measure would create a rapid-response R&D fund for urgent national issues.

Kyunghoon Bae, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, delivers a keynote address.

In addition, the government plans to gradually strengthen the link between strategic-technology designations under the Special Act on the Fostering of National Strategic Technology and tax benefits available under the Act on Restriction on Special Cases Concerning Taxation. Bae said the government would work across ministries and with the private sector to secure “NEXT One” as a future growth engine and deliver technology-led growth.

In the subsequent presentations, Ryu Hong Lim, President of Seoul National University, declared that the old catch-up model—one based on rapidly learning the technologies and standards of advanced countries—is no longer valid. Korea, he said, must become a “designing nation” that poses its own questions and charts its own future, and Seoul National University would serve as a platform for bold, grand questions.

Su-heon Jeong, Executive Vice President and Head of LG Sciencepark, said Korea needs an integrated technology-development system to secure a competitive edge amid America’s vast capital and China’s state-led investment, and stressed the need to build a public-private collaboration model suited to a country aspiring to become a hyperscale-AI powerhouse.

Park Sang Jin, Chairman & CEO of The Korea Development Bank, said, “The role of policy finance is to help technology companies overcome the ‘valley of death,’ where many collapse due to trial and error in the R&D stage and funding shortages. We will support them across the full growth cycle—from startup to becoming unicorns—and strengthen our role as a bridge connecting technology and capital through KDB NextRound and other platforms.”

Seong Keun Kim, President of POSTECH, said Korea is a top performer in high tech across the board, but still lacks the deep-tech capabilities that could become the game changers of the future. He suggested that, to secure the next engines of growth, the country should use its strengths in high tech—mature technologies with established markets—as leverage to strengthen its competitiveness in deep tech.

Clockwise from top left: President Ryu Hong Lim, Head Su-heon Jeong, Chairman Park Sang Jin and President Seong Keun Kim give presentations.

The event also featured expert discussions on three themes: how national strategic technologies can help make Korea one of the world’s top three AI powers; technological self-reliance and cooperation in an era of supply-chain realignment; and strategies to preemptively secure next-generation national strategic technologies and lead future industries.

In Session 3, chaired by Taeseog OH, president of the Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP), panelists Seong-Hyok Sean Kim, Senior Research Fellow at LG Electronics; Lee Chang-hoon, Vice President of the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS); Professor Byoungwoo Kang of POSTECH’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Jiwon Yune, CEO of SDT Inc.; and Sunhak Cho, Director General of the Science and Technology Policy Bureau at MSIT, held an in-depth discussion on how Korea can take the lead in national strategic technologies.

OH posed a fundamental question: beyond securing the technologies themselves, how can Korea build real industrial ecosystems around them? Using quantum technology and advanced materials as examples, he argued that Korea faces a structural challenge: it must build strategic technologies from zero to one despite limited talent, capital and participation from major corporations.

In the quantum discussion, participants focused on the disconnect that often keeps government-led early research results from reaching commercialization, as well as the urgent need to build an industrial ecosystem that can absorb and retain newly trained talent. They agreed that Korea needs to move beyond research centered on individual component technologies and adopt a full-stack, demonstration-driven approach capable of proving real-world viability. They also said that in the early stages, where private-sector participation is difficult to sustain, the government should play a more assertive role through flagship projects and testbeds.

In the materials discussion, panelists broadly agreed that technologies in markets that have yet to form, or that carry significant national-security and supply-chain risks, should be approached through mission-oriented R&D rather than judged by short-term profitability. They cited fusion-reactor materials and substitute materials for scarce resources as examples, saying those areas require sustained government support and parallel international-cooperation strategies over the long term.

KISTEP President Taeseog OH moderates a discussion.

In his closing remarks, OH said Korea must move beyond the conventional approach that treats science and technology, and research and industry, as separate stages in a linear sequence. He said the R&D system should be redesigned around collaboration structures organized around national missions, and pledged to build on the day’s discussion by bringing together government-wide capabilities and those of industry, academia and research institutes so that national strategic technologies can translate into a real economic resurgence.

Group photo of attendees after the Vision Declaration Ceremony