Industry ministry defends master craftsman incentives in AI tacit-knowledge project

The industry ministry said Monday that it has recommended since the start of its manufacturing tacit-knowledge AX program that research allowances equal to 20 percent of each project's labor costs be set aside for master craftsmen, responding to a report that incentives for one task amounted to just 0.97 percent of labor costs.

The ministry was rebutting a Kyunghyang Shinmun report that said compensation for masters and skilled workers in the project was inadequate, citing a case in which an incentive came to 5.94 million won ($4,439), or 0.97 percent of labor costs. Institutions employing the masters have allocated research allowances averaging 33 million won ($24,664) per project, the ministry said.

The program currently involves 78 master craftsmen across 30 projects.

From next year, the ministry plans to set and mandate a minimum research allowance for masters under a new R&D project on developing AI solutions that use manufacturing tacit knowledge, scheduled to run from 2027 to 2030 with a proposed budget of 290 billion won ($217 million) for 2027.

The ministry said the project is necessary to protect the competitiveness of South Korea's manufacturing sector. An aging workforce and the accelerating retirement of skilled workers threaten to sever the tacit knowledge held by manufacturing masters, it said, and a weak domestic manufacturing AI ecosystem could hand leadership in manufacturing AX to overseas companies if support is not delivered quickly.

"This project must be pursued to protect the competitiveness of our manufacturing industry, and the government will communicate closely with all related parties, including industry, research and labor, and push it forward quickly," a ministry official said.