South Korea Launches National Physical AI Initiative to Develop Domestic World Models

South Korea has launched a national initiative to develop domestic physical AI technologies, focusing on localizing world models and building next-generation robot intelligence infrastructure. Led by the Ministry of Science and ICT and supported by the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation, the program aims to reduce reliance on overseas simulation technologies.

The initiative positions South Korea in the global race to develop physical AI systems capable of learning and operating in real-world environments. World models are expected to provide large-scale simulation capabilities, generate synthetic training data, and help robots predict environmental changes before deployment.

Government officials stated:

"This project brings together leading domestic corporations, startups, universities, and research institutes with the goal of securing globally competitive physical AI technologies. The initiative represents a strategic effort to establish domestic capabilities in world models and robot intelligence."

The consortium is led by LG Electronics and includes KT, maum.ai, Holiday Robotics, Robotis, Crowdworks, Alchera, KAIST, Seoul National University, and the Telecommunications Technology Association. The project will develop an iterative pipeline connecting world-model training, robot foundation model integration, real-world validation, performance evaluation, and retraining.

The Ministry of Science and ICT added:

"The objective is to improve real-world robot task completion rates by more than 20 percentage points compared with systems that do not use world models, while creating a foundation for commercial physical AI deployment."

The South Korean government plans to invest 34 billion won over two years. Final demonstrations will take place in manufacturing and logistics environments, with platforms including LG Electronics' CLOiD and Robotis' AI Worker showcasing physical AI capabilities.

The initiative highlights South Korea's ambition to build sovereign physical AI infrastructure and compete globally in robotics, embodied intelligence, and autonomous systems.