South Korea Launches Manufacturing AI Transformation Strategy

South Korea's government on Jan. 27, 2026 rolled out a "Manufacturing AI Transformation" strategy to combine data and artificial intelligence to raise productivity and support self-sustained corporate growth. The plan emphasizes "physical AI"—digitizing skilled workers' movement data via teleoperation and other techniques to train robots and autonomous machines—aiming to convert tacit industrial know‑how into a national data asset. This complements investments in GPUs and data centers.