Artificial Intelligence in South Korea: An Interdisciplinary Study

The Korea Institute is conducting a multi-year, interdisciplinary research project to study artificial intelligence (AI) as a wide-ranging and cross-cutting social phenomenon in South Korea. Treating AI as a multidimensional object of inquiry, this project brings together researchers from the social sciences and humanities at Harvard to identify, connect, and analyze multiple facets of AI in South Korea. The team is studying AI technologies and related practices through the lenses of policy, law, finance, labor, ethics, and the culture industry, among others. Ultimately, we aim to track and understand the effects of AI’s expansion across many social domains and institutions in order to generate comprehensive, detailed, and integrated knowledge about this rapidly changing feature of South Korean society—and of the world more broadly.

Year 1 Report (2025-26): Artificial Intelligence in South Korea: Culture, Politics, Society

The Research Team 
Project Director: Nicholas Harkness, Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology & Director of the Korea Institute

(2026-27)
Graduate Research Fellows:
Jihwan Jeong, PhD Candidate, Government
Jaeyeon Jeon, PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature
Soojin Kim, PhD Candidate, Social Anthropology
Taegyun Lim, PhD Candidate, Government

(2025-26)
Graduate Research Fellows:
Nayun Eom, PhD Student, Sociology
Jaeyeon Jeon, PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature
Soojin Kim, PhD Candidate, Social Anthropology
Taegyun Lim, PhD Candidate, Government

Research Fellow: Han Na Jun, AM in Regional Studies East Asia, 2025

Undergraduate Research Fellows: 
Dean Kim, Concentration in Mechanical Engineering; Secondary in English; Class of 2027
Sonya SoEun Park, Concentrations in Government & Sociology; Secondary in Ethnicity, Migration, Rights; Class of 2026