Park Young-sun: "The Second Act of the AI Economy Begins... Agents, Stablecoins, and Physical AI"

[Block Media Editor Park Hyun-jae] "AI agents, stablecoins, and physical AI are key."

Park Young-sun, a member of the Strategic Economic Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, defined the second act of the AI economy during a keynote speech at the seminar titled 'Strategic Economy and the AI Transformation of SMEs' held at KBIZ Hall in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 1st.

The event, co-hosted by the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Korea Federation of SMEs, was attended by 150 participants, including Kim Ki-moon, President of the Korea Federation of SMEs, Heo Jang, Second Vice Minister of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Kang Myung-soo, President of the Small and Medium Venture Business Policy Association, and other small business owners.

"Silicon Valley is about agents, not LLMs... The era of acting AI will begin in 2027"

Chairman Park shared his experience of meeting with 200 big tech engineers in Silicon Valley recently, stating, "The focus is no longer on AI models but on how AI agents and humans coexist."

He mentioned that Meta has been equipping some employees with necklaces that have cameras and recording devices to datafy their work processes. Quoting Meta engineers, he explained that the ultimate goal is "to have all 100,000 employees become AI agents."

Chairman Park stated, "2025 will be the prologue, 2026 will be the entry, and 2027 will be the year of acting agents."

He interpreted Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA's two visits to Korea as part of this change. Last fall's visit aimed at selling GPUs and Blackwell, while this May's visit focused on securing Korean materials, parts, and equipment needed for the AI factory's 'Vera Rubin' system.

Chairman Park remarked, "There is an ambition to make Korea a forward base of the NVIDIA ecosystem," and questioned, "Should we only applaud Kkanbu Chicken?"

The Strategic Economic Advisory Committee, launched in April, proposed policy tasks to the government based on the theme of transitioning from a 'memory manufacturing country to an AI ecosystem design country' for the second half of the economic operation direction and the 2027 economic operation plan.

Key points include nurturing a Korean-style AI computing stack and industry-specific agents, as well as a national AI factory strategy. Specifically, this includes AI power semiconductors, silicon photonics, pilot introduction of AI agents by the Public Procurement Service, data assetization for manufacturing AI transformation (AX), AI health navigation based on health checkup data, and a unified defense platform for large drones.

A total of 11 projects were proposed, including a national quantum-safe AI homomorphic encryption computing platform and AI agent commerce infrastructure based on technology from Professor Cheon Jeong-hee of Seoul National University.

Chairman Park explained stablecoins in the era of AI agents from the perspective of "changing the payment entity."

He stated, "In an era where agents make payments, we must program 'spend only 1 million won a day,' which cannot be done with Bitcoin, so we have to move towards code-based currency."

He continued, "I don’t mean to say buy Bitcoin or Ethereum, but the system is the same," citing reasons such as reduced fee burdens, programmable payments possible without human approval, and the convenience of international transactions.

Chairman Park explained that Japan completed related legislation three years ago and has been using yen stablecoins in logistics transactions since this spring. He introduced that in the U.S., a Senate procedural vote on the Clarity Act is scheduled for the 15th, emphasizing, "We need to hurry with the won stablecoin."

"If we miss the payment standard, we will have no data"

Kim Yong-jin, a professor at Sogang University’s Business School, projected that the AI agent commerce market will grow to a scale of $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030. Professor Kim serves as the chair of the AI agent commerce subcommittee of the Strategic Economic Advisory Committee.

He explained that during the 2025 Black Friday period, traffic via AI increased by 805% compared to the previous year.

He diagnosed that agent commerce requires communication between agents (A2A), access to corporate data (MCP), payment protocols, and an agent identity system. He explained that the current related standards are led by U.S. big tech companies.

In particular, he analyzed that the global standard competition is rapidly solidifying as Google and Shopify lead the standard connecting from search to cart to payment, with Amazon and Meta joining in April this year.

Professor Kim stated, "Korea has AI basic laws, open banking, and foundation models, but there is no approach to global protocols at all," and warned that if we ride on others' standards like paying 20-30% app store fees, we will have to pay huge licensing costs. "The door will close in 18 months," he said.

He linked the payment standard to the issue of data sovereignty.

He stated, "All behavioral data is combined in payments," adding, "Small business owners have no data because when they make payments, card companies and banks take everything."

As an alternative, he suggested revising the electronic money provisions of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act instead of the drifting Digital Assets Basic Act. He argued for the introduction of KYA (Know Your Agent) to verify agent identities beyond the customer verification system (KYC) and for the operation of a cooperative regulatory sandbox centered on industry-specific cooperatives and consortiums.

Professor Kim emphasized, "It’s not a competition of foundation models, but a competition of standards and infrastructure."

"Don’t rush to buy humanoids... Start accumulating data first"

Kim Jun-ha, head of the AI Policy Strategy Graduate School at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), diagnosed that there is room for Korea to penetrate the humanoid competition between the U.S. and China. Kim serves as the chair of the AI and Robotics subcommittee of the Strategic Economic Advisory Committee.

He presented the case of Unitree's 460% surge on its first day of listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange last month, alongside the recent case where the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blocked certification of Chinese robots.

Kim noted that 97% of humanoid shipments are from China, while Korean products account for about 1%, stating, "The U.S. is containing China, and China is not looking at the U.S. This gap is where we can penetrate."

However, he emphasized that companies do not need to rush to adopt humanoids. He explained that Tesla's Optimus has not yet entered mass production, and 60% of the humanoids shipped are for research purposes, with the efficiency of field robots not even reaching half of that of humans.

Kim stated, "The U.S.-China competition is not about technology but about who can gather data faster."

He advised small businesses to start saving alarm logs, defective photos, paper work logs, and CCTV footage that is deleted after a certain period.

He also proposed an execution plan: to create a data map without incurring costs in the first three months, find three similar companies, and select one process with many problems to secure six months of data. After that, align metadata based on four common items and propose it as a joint project in government projects.

He suggested to the government a public procurement system for manufacturing data and the separation of ownership, contribution, and utilization rights of data, termed 'data three rights separation.'

Kim urged business representatives, "Don’t rush to buy humanoids. Start accumulating data now. Instead of full-scale adoption, focus on just one process. Make skilled workers into AI teachers. Take sovereignty through data clauses."

During the Q&A session, the practical methods for AI agent payments based on won stablecoins were also discussed.

Oh Jong-wook, chairman of the Blockchain Business Cooperative of the Korea Federation of SMEs, asked how small business coalitions could participate in the practical demonstration of agent payments based on won stablecoins. Chairman Park responded, "It is possible," adding, "There is no decided picture from the government, and discussions are ongoing." He further stated that he would connect with Professor Kim to assist in related discussions.

Professor Kim identified the National AI Committee as the control tower of the regulatory sandbox.

He stated, "If it involves payments, we need to bundle the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and the Financial Services Commission," and noted that discussions are underway to start from next year.

Chairman Park mentioned the issue of manufacturing companies not disclosing data externally, referring to Palantir's Field Deployment Engineer (FDE) model.

He said, "If we create a Korean-style Palantir consulting team at the Korea Federation of SMEs to record tacit knowledge and build it on-premise, it will be a huge success."