Source: Financial Times
With over 20% of South Korea's population now over 65, the country is treating AI-powered robotics as infrastructure rather than experimentation—a pragmatic response to a demographic crisis that most wealthy nations are still debating philosophically. This matters because it shows which countries will absorb the labor cost of aging populations through automation versus immigration or public spending, establishing de facto policy through procurement decisions rather than legislation. The question isn't whether the robots work, but whether this becomes a template other East Asian economies copy, potentially locking in a lower-cost care model that undercuts wage-dependent alternatives in Europe and North America.