South Korea Launches Cyber Resilience Task Force to Counter AI-Driven Attacks

South Korea has launched a National Cyber Resilience Task Force, with a national strategy due by the first quarter of 2027 to defend core infrastructure against AI-assisted attacks. The Presidential Committee on National Artificial Intelligence Strategy announced the move on the 12th.

The policy shift is explicit. The government wants to move beyond a security framework focused on blocking hacking attempts in advance. Instead, it aims to build a system that keeps core services — power, telecommunications and finance — running, and restores them quickly, even when a breach occurs.

That concession matters. AI has made cyberattacks more automated and more sophisticated. Blocking every attack in advance has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

What will the task force actually do?

The task force will review security vulnerabilities in the country's core infrastructure and in digital facilities tied to daily life. It will draft policies to minimize service outages and limit damage spread when breaches occur.

The scope of targets is widening. The list now runs from AI data centers, power and telecom networks and financial facilities to installations closer to everyday life, such as refrigeration and freezing equipment.

The government cites a recent case as justification. Early this month in Europe, a cyberattack targeting supermarket refrigeration and freezing equipment caused temperatures to rise abnormally at some stores. The affected stores had to discard stored food. A single compromised cooling system turned into wasted inventory within hours.

Under the new approach, security policy will broaden from prevention and defense to include service continuity and recovery capability (the ability to restore operations after a breach rather than only to prevent one).

One component addresses a known gap. The government will build a system for sites lacking their own security capabilities — small and medium-sized enterprises and local community facilities. That system links four elements:

• Diagnosis of vulnerabilities
• Guidance on improvement and recovery measures
• Simulated drills
• Verification of actual recovery

Who leads it, and by when?

The task force is led by Lee Won-tae, a distinguished professor at Kookmin University. It comprises 11 private-sector members, including Kim Seung-joo, a professor at Korea University.

Four government bodies are also taking part:

• The Ministry of Science and ICT
• The Ministry of the Interior and Safety
• The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment
• The National Intelligence Service

Together they form what the committee calls a government-wide cooperation framework. Such phrasing does not guarantee coordination; past inter-ministry cyber initiatives in other countries have struggled with overlapping mandates.

The timeline is specific. The task force plans to complete a national cyber resilience strategy for the age of superintelligence by the first quarter of 2027. It will then draw up an implementation roadmap covering 2027 and 2028.

The strategy's quantitative targets are:

• 10 or more core action items
• 20 or more diagnostic categories
• At least three scenarios covering compound failures and recovery

The scenarios will cover both core infrastructure, such as AI data centers, and facilities tied to daily life. Compound failures — multiple systems failing in cascade — are the hardest case to plan for, and the source material does not specify how the scenarios will be validated.

What did the chair say?

Lee Won-tae framed the shift as a change in what security means.

"In the AI era, what matters is not only the ability to block attacks but also the ability to keep people's daily lives from coming to a halt even when attacks succeed," Lee said.

He also committed to practical output rather than paper strategy. "We will put together a national cyber resilience plan that actually works, one that diagnoses vulnerabilities on the ground — from core infrastructure to the digital environments closest to people's lives — and supports improvement and recovery," Lee said.

The word "actually" carries weight here. National cyber strategies routinely promise ground-level diagnosis; delivery on that promise for small enterprises and community facilities, which lack dedicated security staff, is where the plan will be tested.

What remains unanswered?

The announcement leaves several questions open. The committee did not state the task force's budget, staffing beyond its named members, or enforcement mechanisms for the improvement guidance it plans to offer.

It also did not define how recovery capability will be measured, or what penalties — if any — apply to operators of critical facilities that fail the planned diagnostic categories. The 2027 deadline leaves roughly two years to answer those questions.

What is clear is the direction. South Korea's security doctrine now assumes successful breaches at power grids, telecom networks, financial systems, data centers and even supermarket freezers, and plans for the day after rather than only the day before.