Nearly half of new Korean AI services based on Chinese foundation models

Korean developers are reportedly adopting Chinese foundation models, particularly Alibaba's Qwen, due to cited low costs and adaptability. A Rockbridge Network Korea report indicates Qwen alone accounted for 46.8 percent of the 1,845 AI models published by Korean accounts on Hugging Face from January to August. The share of new models built on Chinese foundations has grown rapidly, surging from 1.2 percent in 2023 to 49.3 percent this year.

The appeal of these open-weight models, which allow developers to download and modify their underlying weights, reportedly stems from their ease of adaptation for specific applications. This includes fine-tuning with Korean-language data without relying on cloud-based AI services. The report noted that Chinese models' output costs were about one-34th those of comparable top-tier models, though this advantage narrowed to about fourfold across a full benchmark run.

While these immediate benefits drive adoption, industry officials have warned of potential long-term risks. Growing reliance on Chinese models could create technological dependence, supply-chain vulnerabilities, and business disruption risks, especially if geopolitical tensions lead to sanctions or policy changes. Security is also a concern, with 80.2 percent of surveyed small and medium-sized companies citing potential data leaks and 67.7 percent pointing to a lack of transparency in personal data handling with Chinese AI models.