[Gangnam Perspective] The United States Sets Its Sights on Korea’s AI Infrastructure

Every spring, there is a document that draws particular attention in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). It is the National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE Report), published by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). The NTE, one of USTR’s three flagship reports alongside Special 301 and the Notorious Markets List, serves as a barometer for how aggressively the United States plans to ramp up trade pressure in a given year. The tone of the newly released 2026 edition is markedly different from previous years. It goes beyond familiar issues such as tariffs and sanitary and phytosanitary measures and directly targets South Korea’s digital core industries, which are crucial to the country’s future growth.
The most striking part of this year’s report is its criticism of South Korea’s procurement policy for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. USTR claims that in the Ministry of Science and ICT’s projects to procure high-performance Graphics Processing Units (GPU) and cloud computing infrastructure, U.S. companies were excluded, and labels this a new trade barrier. At a time when AI has emerged as a core technology directly tied to national security, the United States appears to be imposing a "discrimination" narrative, disregarding the security-specific circumstances of another country in order to expand its own firms’ market share.
Legislative moves in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea to introduce a network usage fee have also been singled out as a prime example of "unfair competition." The report argues that a bill forcing foreign Content Provider (CP) companies to pay a network usage fee would reinforce the oligopolistic structure of telecom operators and hinder the development of the content industry. Its logic is that, because some Korean network operators also run content businesses, collecting a network usage fee would undermine fair competition.
But the essence of the network usage fee issue is not "discrimination"; it is "fairness." Major domestic CPs such as Naver Corporation already pay hundreds of billions of won in network usage fees every year, consistently contributing to the maintenance of Korea’s network infrastructure. Google, through YouTube, commands overwhelming traffic in the Korean market yet does not pay a network usage fee. Netflix also did not pay such fees and instead remained locked in litigation with SK Broadband until the two sides reached a settlement in September 2023.
Back in 2017, when she was chief executive of Naver Corporation, current Minister of SMEs and Startups Han Seong-sook issued an official statement, declaring, "Naver already discloses and pays massive network usage fees in a transparent manner. Google should likewise openly disclose the revenue it generates in Korea and the scale of the network usage fees it pays." At the time, Naver Corporation revealed that it had paid 74.6 billion won in network usage fees. Considering the subsequent growth of streaming services such as CHZZK, it is estimated that the company is now paying at least over 100 billion won. The current situation, in which domestic companies pay while foreign companies do not, is the very definition of a "tilted playing field."
The logic presented in the trade barriers report is as follows: because some content providers also operate network services, collecting network usage fees cannot result in fair competition. If one follows that logic to its conclusion, the answer is simple: content providers that operate network services should also pay network usage fees.
The criticism of the Cloud Security Assurance Program (CSAP) and the principle of physical network separation is also built on a dangerous line of reasoning. Portraying the minimum safeguards needed to protect data held by public institutions and national key infrastructure facilities as mere "technology protectionism" opens the door to serious encroachment if left unanswered. Amid today’s supply chain crises and geopolitical tensions, data sovereignty is directly linked to national survival. The United States itself is enforcing strong digital regulations on national security grounds, for example through the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, often referred to as the TikTok ban law. On the basis of this year’s NTE Report, Washington is highly likely to pressure Seoul by signaling tough retaliatory measures such as an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Much of the report’s language is little more than a copy-and-paste of last year’s text, but certain phrases have become more aggressive. The term "competition policy" has been replaced with "anticompetitive practices." The Korean government should not dismiss this report as a routine annual exercise. It needs to review response scenarios through close, whole-of-government coordination.
ksh@fnnews.com Reporter