▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's Note: "AI PRISM" (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items for each reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Auto Chip One-Team Task Force Launched: The government and 24 companies and institutions, including Hyundai Motor, have launched a cooperation task force covering the entire cycle of automotive semiconductors from design to real-vehicle verification. With the global automotive semiconductor market set to grow to $133 billion (about 176 trillion won) by 2030, a joint industry-government framework has gone into full operation to change the reality of a localization rate stuck at 5%.
■ Krafton Releases 30B LLM Free of Charge: Krafton has distributed a preview of "Raon-1 Mini," a large language model with 30 billion parameters developed in-house, on the global AI platform Hugging Face under an Apache 2.0 license. Because it can be freely used for commercial services and product development, analysts say the entry barrier to developing AI-based services has been lowered.
■ Hyundai Motor Begins Localizing Robot Components: Hyundai Motor Group is pursuing the localization of actuators, control boards and charging systems, which account for a large share of costs, and has set a goal of entering global markets jointly with domestic parts suppliers. As the U.S. Federal Communications Commission tightens sanctions on Chinese robot components, market opportunities for Korean companies are also drawing attention.
[News of Interest to University Students and Job Seekers]
1. Auto Chip One-Team Takes the Field: 24 Companies Under One Roof
Key points: The government and 24 companies and institutions, including Hyundai Motor, Hyundai Mobis and LG Electronics, have launched a one-team task force for localizing automotive semiconductors. As of last year, the localization rate stood at about 5% and the global market share at 3%, while the world market is projected to grow from $77.4 billion last year to $133 billion by 2030. Hyundai Mobis has begun developing 13 types of semiconductors in collaboration with domestic firms, and for nine of them it has already selected the target vehicle models for application in Hyundai Motor and Kia production cars in 2029. Demand for workers is also expected to rise across the automotive semiconductor ecosystem, including fabless design, foundry and packaging.
2. Krafton's "Raon-1 Mini" Throws Down the Gauntlet in the LLM Ecosystem
Key points: Krafton has released a preview of "Raon-1 Mini," a large language model with 30 billion parameters, free of charge on Hugging Face under an Apache 2.0 license. By combining a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture with proprietary linear attention technology, it reduces computation and improves response speed, and it also lowers inference costs by activating only 4 billion of its 30 billion parameters. The model is said to be strong in Korean-language conversation and instruction-following, and to have secured better performance than comparable overseas models of the same size. Krafton's AI research organization has also demonstrated academic capability, with nine papers accepted to the main track of NeurIPS 2026.
3. Hyundai Motor Unveils Blueprint for Localizing Robot Parts and Going Global
Key points: Hyundai Motor Group said it will first pursue the localization of actuators, control boards and charging systems, core robot components that account for a large share of costs. It also disclosed plans to later expand the scope to physical AI-related components such as camera sensors, robot grippers and data collection equipment, and to target global markets together with domestic parts suppliers. Analysts also said the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's tightening sanctions on Chinese finished robots and components create an opportunity for Korean companies to benefit. Depending on how quickly domestic parts makers secure technological competitiveness, a foothold for joint entry into the global robot components market is expected to be established.
[Reference News for University Students and Job Seekers]
4. Security Concerns Drive Rise of "On-Premise AI"
Key points: Korean AI ventures such as Twelve Labs, Flitto and MangoBoost are successively adopting on-premise systems that run AI on companies' own servers. As more firms seek to operate AI on closed networks over concerns about information leaks, methods of deploying AI services are diversifying. Flitto won a 3.9 billion won on-premise AI interpretation and translation supply contract this month, and MangoBoost began providing on-premise support at the request of a defense contractor. As demand for security-focused AI deployment expands, on-premise AI engineering capability is emerging as a key keyword in the IT job market.
5. Happy Dormitories to Expand, Along With Shared Youth Housing
Key points: The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it will continue to expand Happy Dormitories to ease housing costs for university students and will also increase the supply of shared youth housing provided by Korea Land & Housing Corporation. Happy Dormitories are built with low-interest loans at an annual rate of 1.5% extended to the Korea Advancement Foundation for Private Schools; since 2012, 1.0614 trillion won has been invested in 80 projects, providing housing to more than 50,000 university students to date. The government plans to strengthen a housing welfare system tailored to each life stage by concurrently supplying shared youth housing, in which LH purchases homes and re-leases them at low cost. Policy is expanding in a direction that lowers housing costs for job seekers who face difficult commutes.
6. Cosmax Takes On Biopharmaceuticals With Harvard Medical School
Key points: Cosmax Group has signed an agreement to continue joint microbiome-based bio and healthcare research with Mass General Brigham, a medical institution affiliated with Harvard Medical School, through 2029. In the first phase of research, the two sides identified a mechanism by which microbiome-derived substances relieve symptoms of atopic dermatitis, yielding publication in the international journal Allergy and a domestic patent application. The second phase, the "VIVA Project," will expand the research scope to health functional food ingredients and biopharmaceutical drug candidates, and will also pursue the discovery of lactic acid bacteria materials with GLP-1-like mechanisms of action. Cosmax's strategy of expanding from cosmetics ODM into bio and medical fields is drawing attention as a case of breaking down boundaries between industries.
