In mid-June 2026 Anthropic opened an office in Seoul and announced a set of collaborations with South Korean government, academic, corporate and startup organizations. The company published the announcement on June 17, 2026, and said it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT to advance AI safety; the company updated the post on June 18 with additional MOU details.
Why this matters
Anthropic’s stated goal is to expand safe, responsible deployment of its Claude models and related products in the public sector and industry. Establishing a Seoul office creates a longer-term local base for work with developers, enterprises and researchers who are already building with Claude.
Government collaboration and AI safety
Under the MOU, Anthropic and the Korea Ministry of Science and ICT will cooperate to promote safe and responsible AI adoption in the public sector. The collaboration covers AI safety and cybersecurity work, including evaluating model safety in the Korean language with the Korea AI Safety Institute and exchanging information on AI-enabled cyber threats.
Expanding work with enterprises and startups
Anthropic highlighted that a range of Korean organizations have been working with Claude for years, from WRTN to Law&Company. Examples the company provided include:
- NAVER: recently deployed Claude Code across its entire engineering organization; thousands of NAVER engineers now use Claude Code as part of their coding toolset.
- Nexon: engineering teams at the global online games company use Claude Code to write, review, and ship code for live-service games.
- LG CNS: the IT services arm of LG Group is rolling out Claude to thousands of employees and plans group-wide deployment across LG Group.
- Hanwha Solutions: the energy, chemicals and advanced materials unit is bringing Claude to global employees via AWS Bedrock while meeting in-region data-residency and security requirements.
- Samsung SDS: the IT services arm of Samsung Group is deploying Claude to employees across Samsung Electronics, using features such as Claude Cowork and Claude Code for day-to-day knowledge work, agentic workflows, and software development at scale.
Startups are also embedding Claude into products. Channel Corp uses Claude to power Channel Talk, a customer AI platform that handles customer inquiries and analyzes service and sales data for business insights; the platform is used by more than 230,000 companies in Korea, Japan and the United States.
Research support and social-sector deployments
Anthropic will deepen ties with academia by working with the National AI Research Lab (NAIRL), a consortium that includes KAIST, Korea University, Yonsei University and POSTECH. Anthropic will provide Claude access to up to 60 NAIRL-affiliated researchers to support work on AI safety, model evaluation, alignment, robustness and frontier AI research.
In the nonprofit sector, Good Neighbors Korea — a child-rights–focused NGO — is deploying Claude to help staff analyze program outcomes, interpret social welfare law and internal guidelines, and reduce administrative work that limits time in the field.
Building with the developer community
Anthropic’s Economic Index places Korea among the top dozen countries for Claude.ai use, with much of that activity focused on technical and creative tasks. Korea hosts one of Anthropic’s most active developer communities; Claude for Startups is available in Korea, and Claude Meetups have attracted hundreds of Korean developers since September 2025.
This week Anthropic co-hosted Claude Build Day with BASS Ventures, bringing together more than 100 Korean founders and developers with Anthropic engineers and product and startup leaders for hands-on building. The company also plans a Push to Prod hackathon with Replit, Korea Investment Partners and Korea Investment Accelerator, where startup teams will build with Claude Code and receive mentorship from Anthropic and Replit engineers.
Seoul office leadership and hiring
The Seoul office is led by KiYoung Choi, Representative Director of Korea at Anthropic, who brings three decades of experience leading technology businesses across Korea. The office is now open and hiring across a range of roles; Anthropic directs interested candidates to its careers page for more information.
The announcement was updated on June 18, 2026 to add details about the MOU with the Korean government.
