At the National Assembly’s audit of the Ministry of Science and ICT on 6 October 2026, People Power Party lawmaker Kim Jang-gyeom said that 7 of the 11 AI models loaded on South Korea’s common government AI platform were developed by foreign companies. Deputy Prime Minister and Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon answered that “it is the reality” that Chinese AI models are used in the public sector and in industry.
In Yonhap’s account, he said the ministry will replace the platform’s AI models with models from the second round of the national independent AI foundation modelproject, known as Dokpamo. Yonhap and Money Today report the exchange; Chosun Ilbo reports the figures behind it.
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The key insight: Two accounts sit side by side in the reports: Kim’s count that 7 of the 11 models loaded on the government platform are foreign (and Chosun’s report, from ministry documents, of 19 of 31 introduced models), and Bae’s reply that Chinese models are used in the public sector and in industry and that the platform’s domestic models are Dokpamo first-round results. We set the statements next to each other as the sources give them; none of the sources says which models would be replaced or when.
Money Today quotes Kim as saying that BGE-M3, a model used on the government’s common AI platform, is “a model made by” the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) of China, and that it is in both the Samsung SDS and Naver Cloud platforms (our translation of the Korean). Money Today adds that Kim then claimed BAAI is designated a target of US Commerce Department export controls.
Kim compared the platform with Dokpamo. Money Today reports that he pointed out that Naver Cloud was eliminated from Dokpamo’s first-round evaluation for reasons that included using the weights of a model from China’s Alibaba group as they were. He asked whether the government, having weighed security and outside control when choosing its national-champion AI, fails to apply such standards to the government AI platform that civil servants across the country use every day (our translation).
Both Yonhap and Money Today report Kim’s count: of the 11 models loaded on the platform, 7 were developed by foreign companies and, per Money Today, 4 by domestic companies. Money Today reports him saying that the largest model on Naver Cloud’s platform is NVIDIA’s Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B, and raising the possibility of future dependence on one company’s technology. Yonhap gives the same Nemotron point and adds that the largest model on Samsung SDS’s platform was developed by the Korean company Upstage.
Foreign and domestic models on South Korea’s common government AI platform, in the two counts the reports give: 31 introduced (Chosun Ilbo, from documents it says the ministries gave Rep. Kim Jang-gyeom’s office) and 11 loaded (Kim’s count, as Yonhap and Money Today report it). The counts are theirs; we have not seen the documents.
Where the Numbers Come From
The Chosun Ilbo published the figures on 5 October as an exclusive. It says they come from documents that the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Ministry of Science and ICT submitted to Kim’s office. As of last month, it reports, 31 models had been introduced to the platforms, 12 of them domestic and 19 foreign. Of the 11 already loaded on the government platform, 7 were foreign. Chosun adds that the other models are in a state where they “can be activated at any time”.
Chosun names the two platforms in operation: Samsung SDS’s “Fabrix” and Naver Cloud’s “Clova Studio for Gov” (transliterated from the Korean). It says the list of 31 introduced models includes BGE-M3, which it describes as developed by BAAI.
The Entity List Reference
Money Today attributes the export-control point to Kim’s claim. Chosun states that BAAI is an institution the US Commerce Department put on its Entity List in March last year. We read the Federal Register notice: “Additions to the Entity List”, published on 28 March 2025 (document 2025-05427, 90 FR 14046), lists the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence among the additions, under the requirement “For all items subject to the EAR”, the US Export Administration Regulations.
In the extracts we read, the entry is expressed in terms of items subject to those regulations. Nothing we read in the notice addresses the use of models that BAAI has published, and neither Kim nor Bae, as reported, said that it does.
What the Ministry Told Kim’s Office
Chosun quotes the Ministry of Science and ICT as telling Kim’s office that each platform operator introduced the models “considering versatility, search performance, multilingual support and usability”, that it “does not restrict AI models of a specific country” when introducing them, and that it introduces them after “comprehensively reviewing” each model’s “function, performance and security” (our translation).
Chosun’s own reading is that the government acknowledged it had no verification standard based on the country or institution that developed a model. That is Chosun’s characterisation; the ministry statement, as Chosun quotes it, says only what is quoted above.
What the Minister Said
Yonhap and Money Today give the same core quotation from Bae: “It is the reality that Chinese AI models are being used in the public sector and in industry”. Yonhap quotes him adding that “the domestic AI models used on the government-wide AI common base are Dokpamo first-round results”, and that in the first round the project “did not emphasise usability and adopted some models that had produced some results”. The goal for the second and third rounds, he said, was results “at a globally competitive level”.
On what comes next, Yonhap quotes Bae: “At this point, the four models disclosed in the second-round Dokpamo evaluation can be fully used on the government-wide common AI base. We will work on replacing them, and from now on the public sector will apply second-round Dokpamo models in earnest, and in the third round it should be possible to spread them further.” (our translation) Money Today quotes the same passage with slightly different wording.
For context, Yonhap reports that SK Telecom, LG AI Research, Upstage and Motif Technologies disclosed models in Dokpamo’s second evaluation, and that the three selected, all except Motif, are preparing for the third.
The Structural Read
The two sides answer different questions. Kim’s questions, as Money Today reports them, concern standards: a model from an institution he says is on a US export-control list, and a Dokpamo evaluation that eliminated Naver Cloud for reasons that included using Alibaba-group weights. Bae’s replies, as Yonhap and Money Today quote them, concern direction: the second-round models can be used on the platform, and the public sector will apply them.
The counts have two origins. The 11-model figure is Kim’s, as Yonhap and Money Today report it; the 31, 12 and 19 figures are Chosun’s, from documents it says the ministries gave Kim’s office. The ministry’s own reply to that office, as Chosun quotes it, says it does not restrict models by country and reviews function, performance and security.
The Federal Register notice and the reports sit at different levels. The notice lists BAAI among additions to the Entity List, with the requirement stated for items subject to the US export regulations; the reports say BGE-M3 is on the platform. Nothing we read connects the two beyond Kim’s and Chosun’s placing them side by side.
Minister Bae Kyung-hoon at the audit, as Yonhap quotes him (our translation)
“It is the reality that Chinese AI models are being used in the public sector and in industry.”
Three Implications
THE 7 OF 11 IS A LAWMAKER’S COUNT Yonhap and Money Today report Kim’s count of 7 foreign models among the 11 loaded. The sources do not give a count from the ministry itself; the 31-model figure is Chosun’s, from documents it says were given to Kim’s office.
THE MINISTER’S REPLY POINTS FORWARD Yonhap quotes Bae saying the four second-round Dokpamo models can be fully used on the platform and that the ministry will work on replacing them. The sources do not say which models would be replaced, or when.
THE MINISTRY’S STATED APPROACH IS NO COUNTRY RESTRICTION As Chosun quotes it, the ministry told Kim’s office that it does not restrict AI models of a specific country and reviews function, performance and security. The sources contain no statement from either platform operator.
What Is Not Established
We read Yonhap’s and Money Today’s reports of the exchange, the Chosun Ilbo exclusive and the Federal Register notice. We did not read the official audit transcript or the ministries’ documents, and we did not contact the ministries, Samsung SDS, Naver Cloud or BAAI. We found no statement from either platform operator.
The reports do not say which models Bae would replace or on what schedule. Yonhap’s opening says he will replace the AI models applied to the platform with second-round models, while the sentence it quotes says only “replacing them”. Nothing in the sources says any data was exposed or that any model was misused.
The counts differ in origin. The 11-model count is Kim’s, as Yonhap and Money Today report it; the 31-model count and its 12-and-19 split come from documents Chosun says the ministries gave Kim’s office, which we have not seen. Translations of the Korean passages and the romanisation of Korean names are ours. For other recent sovereign-AI items, see our pieces on Mistral’s Munich hub and Aleph Alpha’s Kolibri open weights.
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At the 6 October 2026 audit, lawmaker Kim Jang-gyeom said 7 of the 11 models loaded on South Korea’s common government AI platform are foreign, and that BGE-M3, from China’s BAAI, is in both operators’ platforms. The Chosun Ilbo, from documents it says the ministries gave Kim’s office, reports 19 of 31 introduced models as foreign. Minister Bae Kyung-hoon said Chinese models are used in the public sector and in industry, that the platform’s domestic models are Dokpamo first-round results, that the four second-round models can be fully used on the platform, and that the ministry would work on replacing them.
As Chosun quotes it, the ministry told Kim’s office it does not restrict models by country and reviews function, performance and security. The sources do not say which models would be replaced or when.
A note on sourcing. This piece rests on Yonhap’s and Money Today’s Korean reports of 6 October 2026, the Chosun Ilbo’s exclusive of 5 October and the Federal Register notice of 28 March 2025, all read in full. We haven’t checked the lawmaker’s or the ministries’ figures independently, and we did not contact the ministries, Samsung SDS, Naver Cloud or BAAI. We draw no conclusion beyond what the people and outlets quoted say. Nothing here predicts anything or is legal, security or investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
