HyperCLOVA X introduction at Team Naver Conference Dan 23 on Aug. 24, 2023 (Courtesy of News1 Korea)
To the world, South Korea is well known as home to the world’s top two memory chipmakers Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. but it is little known that Asia’s fourth-largest economy is also the vibrant tech startup center.
“Overseas investors are not aware of how advanced Korea’s tech industry is,” said Frances Yoon, the president of corporate PR agency October Communications, who was once a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
After she published a story about Korean unicorns on the WSJ in 2022, she said she got many emails from investors outside of Korea, saying how surprised they were to learn about the big stride in the country’s digital technology.
However, she recalled that she barely got press releases or requests for media coverage from Korean tech companies during her time with the WSJ in Hong Kong.
Korean entrepreneurs’ reluctance to reach out to media has resulted in scarce coverage of Korean tech companies, except household names like Samsung, LG Electronics Inc., or SK Hynix, by international media such as The New York Times, The WSJ or The Financial Times.
TechCrunch reports some Korean startups but focuses mainly on their funding news.
“Korean companies seem to be shy about promoting themselves internationally. It is a shame that they are missing good opportunities to increase visibility on the global stage,” Yoon said.
Despite the great advancement in the Korean tech industry thanks to their competitive, innovative ideas and technologies, Korean tech startups and the country’s significant AI achievements remain largely unknown to the outside world.
WEAK GLOBAL AWARENESS
In April, Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) released the 2024 AI Index Report, in which it said Korea has no foundational model for AI, which was not true.
Korea’s information technology giant Naver Corp. has developed its proprietary large language model HyperCLOVA X.
LG Group’s AI research and development center LG AI Research also introduced its upgraded hyperscale AI model Exaone last year, while Samsung Electronics has released its first generative AI model, Samsung Gauss, to compete with the likes of ChatGPT, Google Bard, Bing AI chatbot and other generative AI tools.
Naver refuted the HAI AI Index report on Korea, requesting a revision, but the report was published without any change.
Eun-Yi Ko is a reporter for The Korea Economic Daily
This incident implies that Korean companies are not doing enough for their global PR.
So many foreign companies and investors have left Korea disappointed after they failed to find business partners due to Korean tech companies’ lack of readiness for a global journey, said an official from the Korean tech industry.
“Everyone is talking about going global but not many (in Korea) are ready for it,” the official said.
At a time when the global tech ecosystem is evolving around the US and China, Korean companies will remain mostly anonymous unless they come forward to promote themselves.
Don’t waste time to resent the so-called Korea discount, a tendency for Korean companies to be assigned lower valuations or to bear an inflated risk premium by investors.
Unless they step up efforts to raise their global awareness to make them more visible on the global stage, Korean tech firms’ efforts to achieve sovereign AI will end in vain amid intensifying competition.
It is time to light up a dark room and ensure the world can see who they are.
By Eun-Yi Ko
koko@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.
