(C) Korea Tech Today

SEOUL — As the AI race intensifies globally, South Korea finds itself at a crossroads between fostering industrial growth and protecting intellectual property. On January 22, 2026, the South Korean government enacted the "AI Basic Act," a piece of legislation designed to provide a legal framework for AI development. However, the law has sparked a fierce debate over who truly benefits from its provisions—specifically the "Use First, Compensate Later" principle regarding copyrighted content.

The "Use First" Trap
The core of the controversy lies in how AI models learn. Under the current Act, AI developers are effectively permitted to scrape news and data for training without prior consent from creators, provided they offer compensation or legal recourse after the fact.

Proponents argue this accelerates domestic AI competitiveness. Yet, critics, including Jung Jong-tae, CEO of Hankyung.com, warn that this "comprehensive permission" threatens to collapse the content ecosystem. If high-quality news and creative data are exploited without fair value, the incentive to produce reliable content vanishes, leading to a "quality death spiral" that eventually starves the AI models of the very data they need to function.

The Threat of Global Hegemony
Perhaps the most alarming concern is that the primary beneficiaries may not be Korean startups, but global giants like Google and OpenAI. These firms already possess superior processing power; giving them a legal pass to scrape local data further widens the gap between domestic platforms like Naver and global behemoths.

While countries like Japan and members of the EU are tightening regulations—viewing unauthorized AI scraping as an abuse of superior bargaining power—South Korea’s "loose" approach risks handing over its data sovereignty on a silver platter.

A Path Toward Coexistence
To prevent domestic AI dependency, experts suggest a tiered regulatory approach:

Flexible Standards for Startups: Encourage innovation for new players.
Strict Accountability for Big Tech: Mandate that dominant platforms and global firms pay fair market rates for content.
Zero-Click Protection: Mitigate the "zero-click" phenomenon where AI summaries prevent users from visiting original news sources, depriving media outlets of essential revenue.
The AI Basic Act must be more than a growth engine; it must be a shield for the creators who provide the fuel for that engine. Without a balanced legal framework, South Korea risks seeing its vibrant media landscape dismantled by the very technology meant to usher in a new era of progress.