President Lee Jae-myung has appointed Ha Jung-woo, former Chief of AI Future Planning at the Blue House, as the Vice Chair of the Presidential National AI Strategy Committee.
On the 30th, Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik held a briefing at the Blue House to announce this appointment along with six other ministerial candidates and key personnel changes in the Blue House and presidential advisory bodies.
Ha holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Seoul National University and has worked as a researcher at Samsung SDS before joining Naver. He has served as the leader of Naver Clova AI Research, head of Naver AI Lab, and director of the Naver Cloud AI Innovation Center, where he led the development of the Korean super-large language model 'HyperClova X.' Since around 2021, he has advocated for the concept of 'Sovereign AI,' emphasizing the need for the country to secure AI sovereignty through its own data and infrastructure.
Ha was appointed to the newly established position of Chief of AI Future Planning in the Presidential Office when the Lee administration began in June of last year. He stepped down from this role in April and joined the Democratic Party, running in a by-election for the Busan North District. However, he lost to independent candidate Han Dong-hoon by a narrow margin of 1.7 percentage points in June.
The position of full-time Vice Chair of the National AI Strategy Committee had been vacant for over a month since Im Moon-young left the role in May to run in a by-election in Gwangju.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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