Recently, various policies and initiatives aimed at young people have been introduced. Starting with the Youth Allowance in 2016, it is clear that for over the past decade, these initiatives and policies have been driven by political considerations aimed at winning the youth vote. In particular, various policies and initiatives have recently been introduced to foster young people’s AI literacy in line with the rapidly changing trends of the times. Among these, the most controversial is the “Youth AI Subscription Fee Support Program (tentative name)” proposed by the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government (hereinafter “the City”), the City has allocated 5.625 billion won for the “Youth AI Ladder” project in the supplementary budget bill submitted last month to the 339th Extraordinary Session of the Seoul Metropolitan Council. The plan is to provide 500,000 young people aged 19 to 29 with one-year access to generative AI—which adds advanced features such as coding and AI agents to the basic paid version—starting this October. The Seoul Metropolitan Government will provide these access passes to 500,000 people through a low-cost group-purchase scheme, while local governments in the greater Seoul area—such as Yongin and Uijeongbu in Gyeonggi Province—will also reimburse the actual payment amounts for a small number of young people. Local governments are jumping into a “competition for AI welfare” by paying young people’s AI subscription fees on their behalf. However, with eligibility criteria and subsidy amounts varying widely, concerns are being raised about the program’s effectiveness and fairness.
According to Seoul City Council Member Ju Mu-yeol (Gwanak 2, Democratic Party of Korea), who participated in the budget review for the city’s youth AI subscription support program, “Rather than first selecting 500,000 young people to receive support and then proposing a budget, it seems necessary to first assess the actual extent to which young people are using AI on college campuses and then devise support measures tailored to those findings.” This point alone reveals just how unprepared the city is. The most important aspect of policy design is measuring demand for the policy and, based on that, setting an appropriate budget and program objectives; however, it can be said that the project the city is currently promoting is virtually devoid of any such preparation.
The AI Subscription Support Program for Young People is not merely a policy issue; it is also linked to socioeconomic inequality. The reality is that the gap between young people who are proficient in using AI and those who are not is leading to disparities in their entry into the workforce. The key now is to ensure that policies affecting young people—particularly those related to their use of AI—do not create disparities among them. In other words, if a new policy serves to divide young people rather than unite them, it is as good as nonexistent.
According to the “2025 Digital Information Gap Survey” conducted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency, the level of digital literacy among digitally vulnerable groups was found to be 77.9% of that of the general public. While their level of access has risen to 96.6%, their level of proficiency stands at 65.9%, and their level of utilization is only 80.5%. In other words, although access to digital devices has increased, their actual ability to use them remains insufficient. In the age of AI, this gap could widen into an even greater productivity gap.
In the past, the goal of digital policy was to “enable people to use smartphones.” Going forward, the goal should be “to enable people to verify answers generated by AI and apply them to solve their own problems.” Therefore, I believe that in the future, young people will need what I call “problem-decoding skills”—the ability to train AI using their own criteria and necessary knowledge, and then use that foundation to effectively solve the problems they face.
I hope that policies aimed at fostering these abilities among young people will be implemented. Furthermore, I would like to appeal to the national and local governments, as well as the politicians who influence policies and initiatives related to young people: “Please view young people not as objects of political consideration, but as the focus of your policy obligations.”
Park Jeong-woo, Member of the Suwan News Readers’ Advisory Committee.
