Don’t dwell on Korea discount; light up visibility on global stage

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 isn't widely known that Asia’s fourth-largest economy is also a vibrant tech startup hub.

“Overseas investors are not aware of how advanced Korea’s tech industry is,” said Frances Yoon, president of corporate PR agency October Communications and formerly a reporter for The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

After her story about Korean unicorns was published in the WSJ in 2022, she said she was swamped with emails from investors outside Korea, who were surprised to learn about the huge strides taken by the country’s digital tech sector. 

She recalled, however, that during her time with the WSJ in Hong Kong, she rarely got press releases or requests for media coverage from Korean tech companies. 

The reluctance of Korean entrepreneurs to reach out to the media has resulted in scarce coverage of Korean tech companies — except for household names like Samsung, LG Electronics Inc., and SK Hynix — by international media such as The New York Times, The WSJ and The Financial Times.

TechCrunch reports on some Korean startups but focuses 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 their visibility on the global stage,” Yoon said.

Despite the advancements in the Korean tech industry built upon 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.

In addition, LG Group’s AI research and development center, LG AI Research, 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, and requested a revision, but the report was published without changes.

This incident suggests that Korean companies are not doing enough to develop their global PR.

Many foreign companies and investors have left Korea disappointed after failing to find business partners due to Korean tech companies’ lack of readiness for a global journey, said a Korean tech industry official.

“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 evolves around the US and China, Korean companies will remain mostly anonymous unless they step 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 the dark room and ensure that the world can see who they are.

Write to Eun-Yi Ko at koko@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.