Ha Jung-woo: Architect of South Korea’s AI Future

Introduction: A Transformative Leadership in Korea’s AI Era

The ascent of Ha Jung-woo to the role of Senior Presidential Secretary for AI Future Planning marks a watershed moment in South Korea’s trajectory as a technological powerhouse. Appointed on June 15, 2025, under President Lee Jae-myung, Ha becomes the most senior AI strategist in Korean history, entrusted with the vital mission of taking the country into the global top three of artificial intelligence leadership1. Ha’s journey from academia, through his pivotal work with Naver and the development of the HyperCLOVA X large language model (LLM), to his current governmental role, reflects a blend of technological vision, practical expertise, and policy acumen. The following comprehensive report explores Ha’s biography, academic and professional development, Naver Labs leadership, cornerstone AI contributions, interface with political and civic circles, the shaping of the sovereign AI paradigm, and his central role in steering South Korea’s national AI strategy, infrastructure, and global alliances.


Personal Biography and Education

Early Life and Formative Years

Ha Jung-woo was born in 1977 in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, an environment that later shaped his values of resilience and regional empowerment2. He attended Sasang Elementary School, Sasang Middle School, and later Gudeok High School, institutions noted in Busan for nurturing scientific and technological talent2.

Academic Path at Seoul National University

After graduating high school, Ha entered Seoul National University (SNU), the preeminent academic institution in South Korea, majoring in Computer Engineering. His undergraduate education laid the technical foundations crucial for his future work in large-scale computing and artificial intelligence2.

Ha continued at SNU for graduate studies, ultimately receiving a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (2015) under the supervision of Professor Byoung-Tak Zhang, a well-recognized figure in cognitive and computer sciences3,4. His doctoral research won the department’s outstanding dissertation award in the Fall semester of 2014 and included early pioneering work in computer vision and multimodal learning-specifically noteworthy is a 2015 paper using Pororo cartoon video and subtitle data for semantic analysis2.

Professional Skill Set and Values

Ha’s academic record revealed a strong inclination toward deep learning, continual learning, natural language processing, and multimodal AI-skills that would later underpin his leadership on large language model architectures and industry-scale AI research3. His early academic environment, combined with a period of military service in the 31st Infantry Division (sergeant, 1998-2001), instilled in him practical discipline and an appreciation for scalable, mission-critical systems2.


Career Highlights: Progression to AI Leadership

Table: Key Milestones in Ha Jung-woo’s Career
Year Milestone
1998-2001 Military service, Sergeant, 31st Infantry Division.
2001-2005 B.S., Computer Engineering, Seoul National University.
2005-2015 M.S. and Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University.
2015 Joined Naver Labs as a research scientist.
2017-2019 Led the CLOVA AI research team.
2020-2025 Director of Naver AI LAB, led the development of HyperCLOVA X.
2025-present Appointed Senior Presidential Secretary for AI Future Planning under President Lee Jae-myung.

The above milestones provide a clear perspective on Ha's progression from academic scholar to tech industry leader and, most recently, to a central policymaking figure driving the AI future of South Korea1.

Early Career and Role at Naver Labs

Path from Researcher to Tech Leadership (2015-2020)

After concluding his academic journey, Ha joined Naver Labs in 2015 as a research scientist and quickly progressed to tech lead roles within the company. Naver Labs functions as the R&D arm of Naver, the largest Korean internet platform company and a regional AI leader5.

From 2017 to 2019, Ha led the CLOVA AI research team, focusing on language processing, generative models, and multimodal AI. This period was vital in establishing Korea’s competitive response to global AI advances such as OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s AI suite. Naver’s CLOVA was the first Korean LLM to reach international impact5,4.

Advancing Academic and Industry Collaboration

As the director of Naver AI LAB from 2020 onwards, Ha spearheaded high-profile collaborations with major academic institutes, including KAIST and Seoul National University. He also drove the creation of joint AI innovation centers with these institutions, accelerating the flow of knowledge and talent between academia and the tech industry5.


HyperCLOVA X Development: A Korean LLM Breakthrough

The Birth and Significance of HyperCLOVA X

One of Ha’s most celebrated achievements was his leadership in the development of HyperCLOVA X, launched in August 2023 as Naver’s second-generation, ultra-scale Korean LLM6.

HyperCLOVA X is notable for being trained on over 6,500 times more Korean data than GPT-4, representing the largest corpus of Korean text ever used for AI training7. It was built with deep cultural, legal, and linguistic awareness of Korea-a testament to Ha’s conviction that AI serving national interests must internalize native context and nuance7,8.

The technical advances of HyperCLOVA X include:

  • Massive parameter scaling (reportedly in excess of 200 billion parameters for the largest model).
  • Multimodal training capacity, allowing it to handle images and audio in addition to text.
  • Bilingual and cross-lingual consistency, excelling not only in Korean but performing competitively on English and Japanese benchmarks.
  • Exceptional performance on Korea-specific benchmarks (KMMLU, CSAT, KoBALT-700, and others).
  • Optimized Korean language tokenization, making it faster and more cost-effective than global competitors in Korean use cases.
  • Innovations in self-correction, step-by-step reasoning, and verifiable reward learning7.

Global and Societal Applications

HyperCLOVA X has been widely deployed: in customer service, legal applications, healthcare, public sector services, e-commerce, and as the backbone of the Seoul Data Hub AI chatbot. Its ability to natively process Korean legal, governmental, and societal language supports Ha’s ambition to create LLMs as tools for national competitiveness and self-reliance9. This approach proved pivotal in the face of global concerns around over-reliance on U.S. or Chinese AI services (e.g., OpenAI, DeepSeek), which may not honor local privacy, security, or value priorities10,11.

Technical Influence and Academic Output

Ha steered Naver’s AI labs to publish over 100 refereed papers at international conferences (e.g., ICLR, NeurIPS, EMNLP, ICML), elevating Naver’s research team to sixth worldwide in global AI research impact rankings12,4. Citations exceed 16,000 in the AI/ML research community, with a notable h-index of 40 as of mid-2025, testifying to his sustained innovation and thought leadership4. Notable contributions include breakthroughs in large-scale language modeling, continual learning, multimodal representation, and generative adversarial networks for image/video synthesis4,13.


AI Lab Leadership, Industry Collaborations, and Advisory Roles

Leadership in Industry-Academic Ecosystems

Ha further cemented his influence by leading industry-academic “AI symbiotic ecosystems”. As co-director of the SNU-NAVER Hyperscale AI Center and the KAIST-NAVER Hypercreative AI Center, Ha promoted bidirectional technology transfer and joint research, amplifying Korea's innovation pipeline for AI talent and breakthroughs14.

Formation of a National AI Innovation Network

Ha’s vision went beyond one-off research projects, aspiring instead to integrate government, academia, and major corporations into a single collaborative ecosystem for large-scale push in AI development, infrastructure, and application deployment. He consistently advocated for a “one team” approach for Korea, where AI semiconductor companies, data center operators, cloud firms, and startups work synergistically-backed by strong government coordination and financial support15.

Committee, Advisory, and Civic Engagement

Ha’s policy acumen is illustrated through his participation in:

  • Yoon Suk-yeol administration’s Financial Supervisory Advisory Committee (IT Subcommittee)
  • National Strategic Technology Committee, Ministry of Science and ICT
  • Strategic Planning and Investment Council, Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy
  • Chair/Leader, AI-Data Subcommittee and Super-Scale Public AI Task Force, Digital Platform Government Committee
  • Panelist in national forums and AI vision committees under both liberal and conservative administrations10

His ability to operate effectively across government, industry, and civil society enabled him to shape policy regardless of South Korea’s shifting political landscape. Ha also co-chaired the AI Future Forum-providing over 800 lectures in a single year-which emerged as a major avenue to popularize AI ethics, responsible innovation, and social accountability in technology8.

Civic Society and the AI Future Forum

Ha also served as a co-representative of the “National Union for the Realization of a Right Science and Technology Society,” voicing the social responsibilities and ethical imperatives of AI, and bridging the divide between technological advancement and public good8.


“Sovereign AI”: Philosophical and Practical Foundation

Defining the “Sovereign AI” Strategy

Perhaps Ha’s most impactful policy legacy is his championing of “Sovereign AI.” He defined the concept as the ability of a nation to independently develop, control, and operate AI systems that are deeply attuned to its own language, culture, legal context, and societal values15,11. Sovereign AI is not merely technological independence, but a strategy for geopolitical and digital self-determination-insulating national infrastructure, defense, and public welfare from external manipulation, bias, or data exfiltration that could arise from relying on foreign LLMs and platforms (such as those from the U.S. or China)15.

Ha articulated that the core foundation of true digital autonomy is controlling the “full stack” of AI, from semiconductors to cloud infrastructure, national datasets, foundational models, and the deployment of applications in public services. This vision sought to guarantee economic competitiveness and societal trust, while denying foreign tech giants (or governments) undue influence over Korean citizens or industries15.

Cyclical Growth and Virtuous State-Corporate Partnership

A key mechanism in Ha’s sovereign AI vision is the “cyclical growth strategy,” wherein the government provides foundational support (infrastructure, funding, talent programs) and companies, in return, share AI-driven achievements and best practices back to the broader ecosystem. In this model, benefits accrue to both the competitive market and the public interest, fostering innovation without state overreach or market capture by a handful of conglomerates15.

Global and Geopolitical Considerations

Ha warned of “AI imperialism,” describing the risk of national dependence if critical systems (public welfare, defense, law) are delegated to foreign LLMs or foreign-controlled data clouds15. He argued that as AI becomes the principal tool of twenty-first-century power and influence, the world’s middle powers-Korea among them-must chart a “Third Way,” offering alternatives for countries wary of both U.S. and Chinese digital hegemony. Korea’s sovereign AI model is also designed for export as a partnership offering to other middle and developing nations, positioning Seoul as a trusted and collaborative AI partner, not a hegemon11.


Senior Presidential Secretary: Mandate and Strategic Direction

Appointment and Institutional Mandate

Ha Jung-woo’s official appointment as the first Senior Presidential Secretary for AI Future Planning is historic, reflecting the elevation of AI to “control tower” status within the Presidential Office. This role was created specifically to implement President Lee Jae-myung’s campaign pledge of making South Korea a “top-three” AI nation, rivaling the U.S. and China16.

Responsibilities include:

  • Drafting and overseeing the national AI strategy
  • Guiding a planned 100 trillion won ($74 billion) investment roadmap in AI through public-private partnerships17,18
  • Coordinating construction of mega-scale national AI data centers and supercomputing infrastructure19,20
  • Accelerating “AI transformation” in the public sector-enhancing government services, social safety nets, and administrative efficiency through AI agents and platforms21
  • Talent pipeline initiatives aimed at training 100,000 new AI professionals, establishing AI colleges, digital tutor programs, and streamlining top-tier visa pathways for global experts18
  • Ensuring that sovereign AI and foundational LLMs reflect Korean-and, by extension, regional-culture, laws, and values, and can be targeted for export and co-development with middle-power countries15
  • Developing and enforcing cutting-edge governance, ethical, and regulatory frameworks for trust and safety, aligned to both national interests and global best practices (e.g., Korea’s new AI Framework Act)22,23

AI Strategy and Investment Roadmap

Ha’s office leads the detailed design and implementation of a “100 trillion won era of AI investment.” This includes:

  • Formation of a National AI Fund pooling government, private sector, pension funds, and citizen capital for targeted R&D, infrastructure, and startup support.
  • Aggressive build-out of AI data highways and high-density, renewable-powered data centers across Korea, partnering with industry giants (SK Group, AWS, LG, Naver, local governments).
  • Provisioning of national GPU clusters and AI computing clouds accessible not only to chaebols (conglomerates) but also startups and universities-democratizing access to innovation infrastructure19,24.

Talent Development and Inclusion

To avoid an “AI divide” and talent drain, the government spearheads:

  • National educational reforms, creation of AI-dedicated colleges, and practical talent tracks starting from K-12 to doctoral level.
  • Expanded funding, innovation vouchers, and startup grants to stimulate an “AI entrepreneurial renaissance.”
  • Fast-track visas and international recruitment campaigns to lure top-tier AI experts, including expatriate Koreans and global researchers18.

Infrastructure and National AI Data Centers

The plan includes building the world’s largest AI-specialized data centers, most notably the 7-trillion-won ($5B+) Ulsan project and the Jeollanam-do 3-gigawatt mega-center. These will house tens of thousands of state-of-the-art GPUs-essential for model training at a scale competitive with U.S. and Chinese rivals19,20.

Government policy now prioritizes:

  • Negative regulation frameworks (removal of obstructive laws/procedures) for AI infrastructure siting, power, and environmental compliance.
  • Partnerships with AI semiconductor firms (e.g., SK hynix, Samsung) for domestic chip solutions as alternatives to Nvidia, bolstering Korea’s chip sovereignty.17

AI for Public Transformation and Social Impact

Ha’s vision of public artificial intelligence transformation (“AX”) is to make personalized AI assistants universal for all citizens, redesigning government-citizen engagement, welfare delivery, automated tax and legal services, and proactive identification of vulnerable individuals for social programs21.

The Electronic Government Day in June 2025 highlighted plans to halve administrative reporting burdens, boost civil servant satisfaction, and “escape inefficient routines.” AI will be harnessed in healthcare, disaster response, law, and smart cities, with leading-edge applications already showcased in the Seoul Data Hub and Gyeonggi Business Assistant platforms6.


Global Cooperation and Partnerships

Multilateral and Bilateral Alliances

South Korea, under Ha’s coordination, is intensifying AI cooperation with global partners through:

  • APEC Digital and AI Ministerial Meetings (2025): Advocating for shared, secure AI infra and standards across Asia-Pacific25.
  • The AI Seoul Summit & AI Global Forum: Convening ministers, industry, and academic leaders to shape global governance-Korea’s active role in the “Seoul Declaration for Safe, Innovative and Inclusive AI”26.
  • U.S.-Korea Next Generation AI Working Group: Joint R&D, standard setting, and export control discussions on sensitive AI chips, supply chain resilience, and governance best practices, positioning Korea alongside U.S. and EU allies as a key rule maker, not a rule taker27.
  • Industry-Academia Tech Alliances: Partnering with companies like Intel and Samsung for AI chip/software ecosystems, as well as strategic co-development of foundation models, mirroring or exceeding the international pace of OpenAI, DeepMind, or Alibaba Cloud alliances28.

Ha envisions Korea becoming a “trusted partner” for mid-tier and developing economies in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and beyond-offering not just LLM-as-a-service, but blueprint partnerships that cover talent, ethics, infrastructure, and sovereign data/localization support11.

Governance, Ethical AI, and Regulatory Frameworks

Reflecting both industry and civic advocacy, Ha’s office now orchestrates:

  • Implementation and refinement of South Korea’s AI Framework Act (2025-26), a risk-based approach that balances innovation with the regulation of “high-impact” and generative AI (e.g., healthcare, law enforcement, public decision-making), transparency, and mandatory AI labeling requirements29,23.
  • Mandatory impact assessments, risk management protocols, and certification regimes, with a particular focus on AI in critical infrastructure, public trust, and societal safety-a model intended to serve as a reference for other advanced economies23.
  • Promotion of “AI-for-Good” and digital inclusion, with robust strategies for privacy, cybersecurity, fairness, and no discrimination or algorithmic bias, all centered around continuous feedback and policy iteration30.

Analysis: Challenges and Opportunities

Governance and Bureaucratic Hurdles

Despite the vision, Ha acknowledges that legacy bureaucracy, centralized control, and regulatory inertia can stifle innovation. The National AI Computing Center project, for instance, initially struggled to attract private bidders, revealing the difficulties in balancing government leadership and market participation11.

Ecosystem Design and Societal Accountability

Ha posits that AI progress must balance technical prowess with social responsibility, requiring reforms in governance, startup risk-taking, and public trust. The ecosystem needs to welcome failure, reward reinvention, and ensure that data and IP protection stimulate, rather than constrain, entrepreneurial growth.

International Positioning

One profound tension is how Korea navigates the global race between U.S., Chinese, and now emerging European AI powers, contending not only with technological competitiveness but also with the values embedded in AI systems. Ha’s “sovereign AI” approach, while seen as market-friendly and pragmatic, must convince both domestic and international audiences of its commercial viability alongside its public service ethos11.


Conclusion: A Nation at the Cusp of the “AI Third Way”

Ha Jung-woo’s leadership crystallizes a new Korean vision for AI-one that is technologically advanced, locally sovereign, ethically grounded, and globally engaged. His unique combination of academic rigor, hands-on AI development, industry networking, and policy activism situate him as the architect of the Korean “Third Way” in the AI era1.

The coming years will prove whether Korea’s synthesis of market innovation and government stewardship can bridge the gap between global AI superpowers and local societal needs. Ha’s mandate is nothing less than to design a future in which Korea is both an AI leader for its people and a model for nations wary of surrendering technological destiny to distant data clouds. As new infrastructure is built, datacenters come online, AI legislation is enacted, and sovereign models like HyperCLOVA X are exported, the world will look to Seoul not just for technology, but for a holistic, values-driven approach to AI-an experiment truly worth watching.

Career Milestones Table (see above) encapsulates the pivotal transitions and cumulative impact of Ha’s career-demonstrating the deep interweaving of research, real-world AI project management, civic engagement, and now, high-level policymaking.

In summation, Ha Jung-woo’s appointment as Senior Presidential Secretary for AI Future Planning represents not merely the elevation of a private-sector expert to government, but the institutionalization of a vision for AI in which technological autonomy, social responsibility, and global cooperation can coexist-and where Korea’s digital future need not be determined by others11.


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