South Korean companies ambitious plans for gigawatt-level data centers, but currently only have megawatt-level scale facilities implemented

South Korean companies such as KT, SK Telecom, Naver, and NHN Cloud plan to build gigawatt-level data centers to meet AI demand, but existing facilities have a capacity of only tens to hundreds of megawatts. The capacity of data centers operated by KT and SK Telecom is 152MW and 137MW, respectively, which is only 13% to 15% of their respective 1GW planning targets. South Korean companies may therefore fall into a vicious cycle of losing customers and delayed expansion plans.