SK's YU Sangyeong Calls for South Korea to Become AI Token Exporter

At the 2026 AMCHAM AI Forum in Seoul, YU Sangyeong, chair of SK’s AI Committee, argued that South Korea must evolve from a semiconductor exporter to a “token” exporter to become one of the world’s top three AI powers. He described tokens as the smallest unit of AI output, likening them to oil, and warned that while Korea dominates the high‑bandwidth memory market, it lacks factories that produce AI tokens.

YU said SK aims to build a 15‑gigawatt AI factory and outlined five conditions for Korea to become a token‑exporting nation: constructing gigawatt‑scale AI factories, developing a home‑grown foundation model, expanding domestic token consumption across public, medical, education, manufacturing, finance and defence sectors, consolidating power equipment, cooling technology and next‑generation memory (HBM, CXL) as strategic industries, and nurturing the necessary talent. He emphasized that the challenge requires cooperation among government, corporations and global partners.