As artificial intelligence data centers (AIDCs) emerge as critical infrastructure shaping national competitiveness, industry and academic voices are calling for bold tax incentives and deregulation to spur faster investment by Korean companies. Some warned that missing the window to build AI data centers could accelerate an exodus of corporate investment overseas.
Cho Young-im, a professor of computer engineering at Gachon University, told a policy forum on building AIDCs held at the National Assembly on the 26th that global data center capacity needs will reach 156 gigawatts by 2030, twice the total capacity built worldwide to date. "The next three to four years are the golden window for AI infrastructure investment competition," she said.
About 77% of Korea's data centers are clustered in the Seoul metropolitan area, and on a contracted power basis the concentration reaches 79%, leaving the power grid effectively saturated. That makes a phased relocation to other regions urgent, but under current tax incentives companies may look overseas, where policy support is more generous, rather than build in Korean provinces. India exempts foreign cloud companies using local data centers from income tax for 20 years, while Japan and Taiwan apply research and development tax credit rates of up to 40% and 25%, respectively.
In Korea, the investment tax credit rate for AI data center facilities stands at 15%, below the 20% applied to semiconductors. Power, air-conditioning and cooling equipment are also excluded from the investment tax credit. The United States treats such power and cooling infrastructure as qualifying assets on the same terms as GPUs, allowing the full amount to be deducted in the first year of investment.
"Under the current system, data centers located in overconcentration control zones in the Seoul metropolitan area are excluded from tax credits," Cho said. "Because of problems such as tax uncertainty, we could see an exodus abroad rather than relocation to the provinces."
Companies also called for tailored policy support and revisions to existing rules. Kim Se-woong, vice president of AI synergy and communications at Kakao, said AIDC power consumption tends to peak during the day when usage is heavy and fall at night. "Kakao is building a Korean-style GPU operation system that uses them for inference during the day and for training at night," Kim said. On that basis, Kakao proposed that any AIDC-specific electricity tariff include incentives for nighttime use to improve power efficiency.
Lee Young-tak, vice president of the AI Policy Research Institute at SK Telecom, said a 15% tax credit applies to facilities recognized as commercialization facilities for AI national strategic technology, but argued that not a single Korean company will actually receive the benefit. "To get the 15% tax credit, a company has to buy the GPUs itself, install them and use them directly," Lee said. "Because an AIDC is fundamentally a colocation and leasing business that supplies the intelligence it produces to outside parties, it is difficult to meet that requirement." Lee called for the system to be revised.
