Science ministry taps Kakao executive to lead public AI service unit

The science ministry said Friday it has appointed Kim Se-woong, a former Kakao vice president, to lead a new unit tasked with building artificial intelligence services for the public, putting a private-sector engineer in charge of a program meant to move government AI work away from outside contractors.

Kim, who served as head of AI synergy performance at Kakao, starts work on Nov. 2 and will lead the National AI Service Innovation Task Force until Sept. 30, 2028. The unit was created this year to develop and deliver AI services that citizens notice in daily life, quickly and flexibly.

The appointment sets the direction of a hiring experiment inside the government. Rather than commissioning services from outside developers, the task force is staffed largely by private engineers hired as fixed-term public officials, who work directly on finding needs and building the services. Private developers make up 26 of its 61 staff, alongside 16 so-called AI champions trained in the public sector, 13 ministry personnel and six outside experts.

The ministry opened the hiring process for the task force's private developers in August and solicited candidates for the director post in September. Kim was selected after document screening and interviews. He founded and ran a technology startup, MightyWorks, in 2009 and later worked at Kakao across AI technology development, service commercialization and infrastructure buildout.

Kim said the point of AI in government is solving problems people actually have. "Innovation in artificial intelligence that citizens can feel begins not with unveiling new technology but with actually resolving the inconveniences people face in daily life," he said. "Based on the AI technology and service development experience I built in the private sector, I will combine the speed and innovativeness of the private sector with the accountability of the public sector to quickly present AI services that are of real help to citizens."

The task force plans to hire additional private developers from early November as it begins full operations, with job postings to be listed on the ministry's website and on the government's job portal. No figure for the number of additional hires was given.