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Seri Yoon, Waseda University, JapanAbstract
In November 2025, South Korea announced under the slogan “AI talent for all” an AI education package including a 5.5-year bachelor's-to-PhD fast-track, investment in “AI highways” data centers, an AI regulatory “rationalization” roadmap, and a lifelong AI education strategy. Ultimately, these measures form a national plan for Korea to become a “top three AI power” by 2030. The plan emphasizes innovation, competitiveness, and talent production. However, it remains unclear how education is reimagined or what this implies for equity and public accountability. Using Sheila Jasanoff's concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, this study examines how Korea's strategy aligns education, regulation, and infrastructure around AI competitiveness. Methodologically, the study uses qualitative critical policy analysis and discourse analysis on a purposive corpus of authoritative agenda-setting official documents from November to December 2025. The corpus includes high-level speeches, cross-ministerial roadmaps, and official press releases explicitly linked to the “AI talent for all” and “AI G3” initiative. Data are analyzed through a hybrid coding approach integrating deductive categories derived from Jasanoff's framework with inductive thematic coding. Analysis suggests education is cast as an AI workforce production system, while questions of educational inequality, labor conditions, and democratic oversight remain marginal. By conceptualizing Korea's strategy as a sociotechnical imaginary, the study offers a lens to analyze AI initiatives in other countries. The study argues AI education policy should be imagined not only as an instrument of competitiveness, but also as a space for critical digital literacy, institutional accountability, and inclusive futures resonating with UNESCO and OECD priorities.
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Conference: ECE2026Stream: Educational policy
Published: Wednesday, September 23, 2026
This paper is part of the ECE2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Yoon S. (2026) “AI Talent for All”: Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Korea’s 2025 AI Education and Regulation Strategy ISSN: 2188-1162 The European Conference on Education 2026: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 39-52) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2026.4
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2026.4
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