South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT launched AI-NEXT, a program to deploy agentic AI systems across its entire administrative workflow, The Korea Times reported on April 10. The ministry has allocated 3.17 billion won ($2.14 million) for the current fiscal year and has begun a formal bidding process to select implementation partners for strategy planning and framework development.
The pilot phase targets five administrative functions: radio frequency licensing reviews, electromagnetic compatibility certification assessments, budget analysis, classification and response to National Assembly inquiries, and automated news summarization and analysis. Each area was selected for its reliance on structured data processing and repetitive decision-support tasks, per Yuyjo. The ministry plans to upgrade its full document management infrastructure into an AI-driven system by 2028.
Broader Government Push
AI-NEXT is part of a coordinated national effort. The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Intellectual Property are separately developing an AI agent model for patent information processing, which will be integrated into the Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service portal to help users understand complex patent filings through an intelligent conversational interface, according to The Korea Times.
The Ministry of Finance and Economy launched its own initiative, the AI-ONE platform, focused on centralizing documentation and deploying task-specific AI services across departments.
These programs follow the April 1 launch of Korea’s Agentic AI Alliance, a public-private consultative body established with NC AI, LG AI Research, Kakao, and Soongsil University’s AI Safety Center, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. NC AI is focused on finding industry applications, LG AI Research is tracking global technology trends, Kakao is proposing policy improvements, and Soongsil University is building a safety evaluation framework.
“Competition in the AI industry is now shifting from technology to leadership in the ecosystem,” Second Vice Science Minister Ryu Je-myung said in a government release.
Government-Scale Adoption Signal
South Korea’s coordinated, multi-ministry approach to agentic AI deployment represents one of the first G20-tier government programs explicitly targeting autonomous agent systems in public administration. The initiative moves beyond pilot experimentation into production-level deployment with funded timelines and institutional accountability. For agent infrastructure companies, the program signals that government procurement of AI agent systems is transitioning from speculative to operational.