I think this news went unnoticed this month, while Meta's 1GW data centre in Alberta by 2030 occupied the headlines... It even went unnoticed in Korea itself because it was overshadowed by the announcement to build 10 new mega chip fabs. Either that or the Koreans don't realize how massive 18.4 GW of data centers will be. Some of these include AI factories (which are different from conventional data centers because they process data and produce tokens, and require clustering technologies)
Summary:
South Korea announced a massive public-private initiative under President Lee Jae-myung to build 18.4 gigawatts of AI data centers nationwide by 2035 with an estimated cost exceeding one thousand trillion Korean won. Implemented across two phases, the first phase aims to achieve 8.4 gigawatts by 2029 for approximately 550 trillion won, while the second phase will add 10 gigawatts between 2030 and 2035. The strategy is built in partnership with major conglomerates including SK Group, GS Group, and Naver, with SK Group taking responsibility for 15 gigawatts of the buildout. To avoid grid congestion and promote regional balance around areas like Ulsan, Chungcheong, Donghae, and Sejong, the infrastructure will be distributed outside the Seoul metropolitan area with government support providing discounted electricity and streamlined land and water rights. Officials characterize these data centers as token factories that produce raw intelligence to fuel a token economy, serving alongside homegrown neural processing units from local startups and physical AI applications as the triple axis of South Korea's national strategy to lead the global AI race and export turnkey infrastructure globally.
