Publication

A Generative AI Pass for 500,000 Young People: What Is Seoul's Budget Buying?

Seoul added a new 26.6 billion won line, the Youth AI Growth Pass, to its 2027 budget proposal to give 500,000 young residents a generative AI service pass and level-based training. The 5.6 billion won reported earlier was a three-month pilot in the 2026 supplementary budget that the city council cut in full, and 22.5 billion won was the reported cost of running it for a year. The pilot worked out to 3,750 won per person per month (calculated value), and Seoul has not disclosed the unit price or training costs within the 26.6 billion won. For its own civil servants in 2025, Seoul estimated that per-person subscriptions for all staff would cost 3 billion won a year against about 200 million won for usage-based pricing. The national 2027 budget proposal also includes two Future Response Fund programs that widen AI use: 250 billion won for AI services for all citizens and 19.96 billion won for joint AI subscriptions for university students. Evidence on effects comes from educational experiments with students, including Estonia's AI Leap, where activation and monthly use fell short of targets, and a field experiment showing that AI use without learning safeguards lowered later scores. The brief proposes disclosing how the 26.6 billion won was calculated, comparing passes with usage-based pricing and joint purchasing, specifying multiple suppliers and exit terms, designing an evaluation of activation and learning outcomes, and coordinating with national programs.