Labor ministry, World Bank host ASEAN+3 forum on AI workforce training

The labor ministry said it is co-hosting a regional forum in Seoul on building workforces suited to an artificial intelligence era, drawing officials from 11 ASEAN countries along with Korea, China and Japan.

The 14th ASEAN+3 Human Resources Development Forum, organized jointly with the Human Resources Development Service of Korea and the World Bank, runs Tuesday and Wednesday under the theme "From skills to jobs: nurturing AI-ready talent in the ASEAN+3 region." About 50 people are attending, including government officials responsible for human resources development, specialists from international organizations such as the World Bank and the ASEAN Secretariat, and Korean experts.

Discussions center on policy directions for regional workforce development in response to digital and industrial change, and on national policy tasks and ways to cooperate.

In a keynote address, World Bank senior economist Tara Béteille is presenting implications and response directions for each country's AI-era workforce policies at different stages of preparation, based on empirical data from the ASEAN region.

Participants are also running an exercise in which they redesign Indonesia's AI public training program, which currently covers two job categories with no division by level, into a system that separates occupations and splits training into beginner through advanced stages, working with World Bank and Korean experts.

The forum is showcasing Korean programs as a model. The AI+ Skills UP project, launched this year, offers training tailored to people entering the labor market, those already working and those in transition between jobs, with the aim of reaching more than 1 million people with AI training over the next five years. The K-Digital Training AI Campus, meanwhile, pays full training costs and a training allowance and aims to train 10,000 working engineers in job-specific skills such as AI system development and AI application software development.

Lee Byung-hoon, chairman of the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, said the shock sparked by industrial change from AI and the digital transition may hit low-wage workers in developing countries harder than Korean workers. "The service will actively contribute to building vocational skills development service systems for the upskilling and reskilling of workers in the ASEAN region as well as in Korea," he said.

Son Pil-hoon, head of the planning and coordination office at the Ministry of Employment and Labor, said the international community has recently focused on AI vocational training policies aimed at building a human-centered AI era. Korea will continue to work with ASEAN and to invigorate various platforms for developing policies needed in the AI era, including support for vulnerable groups and human resources development, he said.