“The Golden Time for Agricultural AX… Dependence on Platforms Means Losing Sovereignty”

[Korea Agricultural Technology News=Reporter Lee Hyun-woo] ‘Artificial intelligence (AI)’ and ‘robotics’ are rapidly emerging as solutions for rural South Korea, which is facing the triple burden of population decline, aging, and the climate crisis. Although there were once criticisms that such technologies did not suit Korea’s environment of predominantly small-scale farmland, advanced agricultural machinery technology has now become a key driver that will determine the survival of agriculture.

Accordingly, to mark its inaugural issue, Korea Agricultural Technology News met with Jeong Seon-ok, president of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery—the nation’s most authoritative academic society in the field of agricultural machinery—and professor in the Department of Smart Agricultural Systems and Mechanical Engineering at Chungnam National University. Beginning with Korea’s first unmanned tractor research at the Rural Development Administration in 1996, President Jeong has spent 30 years focused solely on precision agriculture. In this special inaugural interview with our paper, he emphasized that “to break through the crisis in the domestic agricultural machinery industry, an organic combination of industry, academia, government, and research, along with the establishment of field-centered infrastructure, is urgently needed.” He added, “The direction has already been set. What matters now is speed and building the ecosystem,” calling for bold and thorough agricultural AX (AI transformation).

Interviewer: Lee Hyun-woo, Editor-in-Chief
Date: May 20, 2026
Location: Chungnam National University 

-You have been researching precision agriculture for 30 years, so seeing AI now drawing attention in agriculture must feel especially meaningful.
“This is a path advanced countries were already on decades ago. We, too, had that direction laid out 30 to 40 years ago. However, because it was judged that there was not a great need to rush the introduction of expensive advanced equipment in a domestic environment with sufficient labor, among other factors, the adoption of those technologies in the field was slow.
Afterward, as the agricultural population declined and aging progressed rapidly at the same time, Korea also began to feel a sense of crisis a few years ago, and the direction changed. I do regret that we did not begin 30 years ago with a shared understanding of where agricultural technology needed to go, but I am glad that the direction has at least now been set. Given Korea’s conditions of limited arable land, this is the path we must take. However, if we are to catch up at once with technologies that advanced countries have refined over decades, we must throw ourselves into it relentlessly for at least the next 10 years or more.”

-Objectively speaking, what level are Korea’s smart agricultural machinery and AI technologies at?
“We cannot tell only rosy stories. Compared with global giants backed by enormous capital such as John Deere, we are still at the crawling stage. In advanced countries, these are technologies that have been broken down, repaired, and upgraded in the field over decades. We are only just beginning, so the government must significantly raise support rates so that farmers can use advanced machines without burden. Technology can grow only when there is an outpouring of feedback from the field.
What is truly worrying is not the machines themselves but the ‘platform.’ If our agricultural machinery companies fall behind in the process of agriculture becoming data-driven and systematized, foreign agricultural platforms will eventually dominate the domestic market. Taiwan is a representative case of failure. The moment the platform becomes dependent, we lose all agricultural sovereignty, including national soil information and agricultural supply-and-demand information. Because Korean farmers have exacting standards, if domestic companies can meet those standards alone, there is an opportunity to create a world-class converged hardware-software system. It is the same formula by which Korea’s home appliance industry grew.”

-Many technologies have been developed, but it is hard to say they have reached the stage of widespread adoption in the field. In the end, it is impossible not to emphasize the government’s role.
“Compared with the enormous capital of countries such as the United States and Japan, our conditions are weak. This is a time when the government needs to invest boldly over the long term. And the barriers between ministries must be broken down. Areas requiring large budgets, such as production funding support or the development of core robot technologies, should be handled by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, while field deployment and workforce training should be exclusively overseen by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. We need an organic dual-track structure: industrial support by the industry ministry, and agriculture and rural support by the agriculture ministry.
In addition, the state must manage the diverse agricultural information within Korea. Information that the government needs to obtain for policy purposes can be secured by providing subsidies to farmers. If local governments collect production-process data and manage the data provided by farmers, organizing it into statistics and the like, it can be operated efficiently. The digital environment of farmland must also be established quickly. Infrastructure should be improved so that agricultural machinery can enter and exit, and electricity and communications control should be made possible so that digital agriculture can be carried out.”

-Considering the development of advanced technologies and their wider deployment in the field, continuous government support is also important.
“The pace of development for harvest-related robots is somewhat slower than for pest control or weeding. That is because harvesting is a completely different domain. A robot must recognize the fruit, determine whether it is ripe (maturity), and either twist and pick it or cut the stem without damaging the crop. The mechanism is also different for each crop. This is a field that must be researched until it works. In that sense, the government’s role is important. Advanced countries support budgets and policies until a conclusion is reached, but in our case it is regrettable that projects have been carried out only as one-off assignments. At a minimum, for research and demonstration targeting major crops, the government must continuously concentrate manpower and budget.”

-For advanced technologies to take root in the field, continuous management is necessary. But in the field, it is not easy to find places with properly equipped related organizations.
“Policies for distributing products containing advanced technologies often reach their limits due to a lack of continuity. For example, local governments recently win hundreds of billions of won in smart agriculture competitive project budgets. And once the main project ends, someone must continue managing and providing training to solve problems and so on for the technology to take root in the field. But in reality, there is no specialized organization on site. There is not even a single Grade-5 team leader position, so it ends as one-time administration. If the priming-budget funds provided by the state are to be spread locally and used to educate farmers, official ‘smart agriculture teams’ must be created at city and county agricultural technology centers, and specialized extension personnel must be assigned. Only when leaders—mayors and county heads—make decisions can these efforts avoid ending as one-off projects.”

-It also seems that launching the ‘SME Industry-Academia Cooperation Committee’ after taking office as president is part of efforts to advance the agricultural industry.
“Domestic conditions are truly difficult, as we face the crisis of shrinking domestic demand and declining exports. That is why industry, academia, government, and research must unite closely and respect one another. Companies must pursue industry-academia cooperation, and large corporations must embrace small and venture businesses and move forward as a ‘package consortium.’ The reason we launched the ‘SME Industry-Academia Cooperation Committee’ was also to serve as a hub for a win-win network between large and small companies.”

-Advanced technologies are steadily being developed and distributed, but it is said that workforce problems are severe in the field. In particular, there are loud complaints that there are no ‘digital agriculture specialist mechanics’ to repair smart agricultural machinery and the like. This is cited as one reason why the spread of products equipped with advanced technologies is slow. What measures are needed to cultivate talent tailored to field needs?
“The reason students who majored in this area in high school or university do not come to the field is simple. There is no vision. If even after going to a repair shop and working hard it is difficult to earn an annual salary of 40 million won, who would come? In many cases, the certificates students obtain are not linked to hiring preferences or similar advantages. That is why they do not choose this path. In the field, only a vicious cycle is repeating, with people lamenting that there is no workforce.
So stable jobs must be created through institutional measures. First, a new ‘smart agriculture maintenance technician’ certification should be established, and holders should receive preferential treatment in employment. If they were hired as regular employees at the agricultural machinery rental service centers in 150 cities and counties nationwide, thousands of quality jobs would be created. Then high school agricultural machinery departments and university programs would naturally revive. In addition, there are more than 500 golf courses nationwide, and each facility has dozens of agricultural machines, but there is no obligation to hire majors in the field. In consultation with the Ministry of Education, it is necessary to introduce a mandatory hiring system for agricultural machinery majors at golf courses.” 

-There are also concerns about legal liability in accidents involving AI agricultural machinery and about the digital divide in rural areas.
“This issue needs to be approached cool-headedly. At present, there is a need to redefine the qualification standards for farmers. We should consider granting farmer status to those who farm, while shifting to a method of providing subsidies to farms that have achieved a certain scale or larger. It is right to support small farmers with convenience equipment for rural settlement conditions, but when it comes to advanced AI technology subsidies, differentiated support is needed so that they are concentrated on sizable farmers who actually make agriculture their profession.
As for legal liability, it is urgent to establish guidelines mandating the installation of an ‘agricultural machinery black box’ that records operating logs in autonomous agricultural machinery. Only then can it be clearly determined whether an incident was caused by a communications error, machine malfunction, or user negligence.”

-Lastly, please share a word of advice for ‘Korea Agricultural Technology News,’ which is taking its first step while positioning itself as a ‘standard medium for technology verification.’
”There are already many media outlets that deliver only routine news. I hope Korea Agricultural Technology News, true to its name, will cover in-depth professional information on advanced technologies at home and abroad. In particular, I hope it will become a professional, principled media outlet that leads on the issues of ‘data and hardware standardization (Standard),’ which will become a key topic on the global stage going forward, as well as technology verification.”