The government plans to finalize its "2045 National Development Strategy" by year's end, centering on strengthening AI competitiveness, securing a stable power supply and establishing technological security sovereignty as the core pillars of a sweeping national systems overhaul.

Prime Minister Han Seong-sook speaks at the second meeting of the Korea 2045 Strategy Committee at Government Complex Seoul in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday. [Yonhap]
Prime Minister Han Seong-sook speaks at the second meeting of the Korea 2045 Strategy Committee at Government Complex Seoul in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday. [Yonhap]

The government held the second meeting of the Korea 2045 Strategy Committee on Wednesday at Government Complex Seoul, chaired by Prime Minister Han Seong-sook, to discuss the direction of the national development strategy.

The committee was launched in May to address structural and compounding crises — including demographic shifts, polarization and the AI transition — and to consolidate national capacity around a medium-to-long-term development strategy.

Wednesday's meeting focused on translating accumulated expert deliberations and public feedback into a concrete future vision and strategy for South Korea in 2045.

The National Future Strategy Research Committee of the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements designated 2045 — the centenary of Korea's liberation — as a historic inflection point and a civilizational turning point. It diagnosed the country as facing a complex crisis driven by the AI transformation, a demographic crisis, climate tipping points and geopolitical power competition that cannot be resolved through piecemeal responses alone.

Drawing on strategic foresight analysis, the institute presented four scenarios for South Korea in 2045: leading the great transformation, fragmented growth, complacency in achievement and slow decline.

Among these, the institute assessed that South Korea currently finds itself in a "dual bottleneck" — a state of "high input, low conversion," in which world-class technological capabilities are not being translated into results, compounded by "high capacity, low legitimacy," reflecting a weak foundation for social consensus. As a result, the country was assessed to be hovering on the boundary between "fragmented growth" and "slow decline."

To break through this impasse, the institute proposed two strategic pillars: redesigning the innovation growth engine and redesigning the social operating system. On the innovation side, it envisioned linking three mega-projects — semiconductors, AI data centers and physical AI — with the "5-pole, 3-special" national balanced development framework. On the social side, it called for building a new social operating system beyond the welfare state by guaranteeing a basic standard of living for all citizens.

The institute proposed "Innovation-Leading Nation" as South Korea's overarching vision for 2045.

Priorities to guide the selection of key tasks going forward were also presented. The Public Communication Group gathered 1,229 online public ideas, held three offline town hall meetings and expert roundtables, and conducted surveys targeting the general public, youth and specialists.

A survey of 39 experts conducted last month identified growth and innovation, mutual prosperity and balance, fairness and efficiency, sustainability and global leadership as the core values to be reflected in the medium-to-long-term strategy. Respondents also emphasized the importance of continuity, executability and consistency.

Based on the survey results and additional consultations, the Public Communication Group derived and reorganized 39 detailed response tasks, then conducted a further assessment to gauge their importance and urgency.

As a result, 17 tasks were identified as both highly important and highly urgent over the medium to long term: securing and expanding AI competitiveness, strengthening power supply stability, establishing technological security sovereignty, identifying and nurturing future new growth engines, reforming pension and welfare and care systems for an aging society, restructuring the industrial workforce development system, pursuing strategic fiscal investment, advancing technology-friendly regulatory and administrative reform, and nine additional tasks.

Those additional tasks include eliminating fiscal structural inefficiencies, strengthening the use of female, middle-aged and elderly human resources, restructuring education, defense and industrial systems to respond to population decline, building a foundation for quality job creation, strengthening the export base and supply chain, expanding the tax revenue base, supporting occupational competency development in preparation for the AI transformation, establishing a response framework for new security threats, and expanding youth job entry opportunities.

The government plans to concentrate its policy capacity on priority tasks drawn from areas requiring fundamental reform across education, labor, technology and industry, security, and welfare.

"The 2045 National Development Strategy must not be the government's strategy alone — it must be a strategy shared by all citizens," Prime Minister Han said. "The process of fully gathering the wisdom of every individual, across generations, is what matters most."

Han added that the government would "select forward-looking, bold and challenging tasks so that 2045, the centenary of liberation, marks South Korea as irreplaceable in every respect."

The government plans to continue gathering public input through open calls, joint seminars with related agencies, in-depth group interviews and roundtables. Based on that input, it will work with related ministries to select the key priority tasks for the 2045 strategy, incorporate them into the final plan and announce it before year's end.


y2k@heraldcorp.com