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Top policy aide floats 'national dividends' to share AI profits with public
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By
Park Ji-won
Published
May 12, 2026 1:34 pm
KST
Kim Yong-beom, presidential chief of staff for policy, speaks during a press briefing at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, April 27, after meeting with Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google Deep, alongside President Lee Jae Myung. Yonhap
Kim Yong-beom, presidential chief of staff for policy, proposed the country should come up with a “national dividends” policy that returns the excessive tax revenue generated by Korea's booming artificial intelligence (AI)-related industries to the public.
“The fruits of the AI infrastructure era are not the outcome of individual companies alone, but are built on the industrial foundation that the entire nation has accumulated over the past half-century,” Kim wrote on Facebook, Monday.
Invoking Norway's sovereign wealth fund — created in the 1990s to channel oil revenues back into society — he argued that the principle of broad social return should apply equally to Korea's AI windfall.
"Part of those fruits should be structurally returned to all citizens. That is the legitimacy and principle of the new policy design," Kim wrote.
Kim suggested several possible uses for the funds, writing, “Should they go toward youth startup assets, rural basic income, support for artists, strengthening pensions for the elderly or AI-era transition education?”
His remarks come as public debate grows over how companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix should share their massive operating profits amid soaring global demand for AI-related products, including high-performance memory chips. Shares of the two companies have surged more than 200 percent over the past six months, as they post record revenues and help push the benchmark KOSPI to all-time highs.
Kim's comments reflect a broader diagnosis of Korea's shifting industrial structure. He noted that the country is transitioning from a traditional cyclical export economy toward what he called a "technology monopoly economy," driven by its status as one of a handful of countries capable of producing high-demand products across the full stack of memory semiconductors, batteries and displays.
“This is not merely a matter of industrial competitiveness. In an era when supply chain sovereignty has become a key variable in national strategy, such manufacturing capabilities amount to geopolitical leverage. As AI infrastructure expands worldwide, the strategic importance of Korea’s industrial ecosystem will grow accordingly,” he wrote.
The proposed policy aligns with the Lee Jae Myung administration's "basic society" vision, which aims to guarantee a minimum standard of living for all citizens. Kim said the distribution of AI-era surplus is not simply a matter of redistribution but of managing structural inequality, warning that AI profits risk deepening what he described as a "K-shaped" polarization in Korean society.
The presidential aide urged the public to take action, saying it is a matter of choice whether the country remains a traditional economy or transforms into a new industrial nation.
"The model that we think through, debate and create first could eventually become a standard for nations in the AI age," Kim wrote.
Kim is a veteran economic bureaucrat who served as a former vice finance minister. He was appointed to his current position when the Lee administration took office in June 2025.
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