Korean workers are paying to learn AI, while employers face calls to fund training

Some South Korean workers are paying out of pocket to learn AI tools as employers encourage their use. A survey found 82% of employed respondents expect AI skills to matter in their jobs within five years, raising a practical question: who should pay for getting those skills?

Watch Desk analysis

What happened

The Korea Times reports that a Google-commissioned survey of 1,057 South Korean adults found 74% were interested in AI skills training. One worker profiled, marketer Lim, paid 1 million won for a two-day Claude Code course and is now using AI for tasks including research, reports and retrieving past project records. Lim said AI is involved in 70 to 80% of her work.

The article, translated from sister publication Hankook Ilbo and edited by The Korea Times, also cites a study of 305 workers in IT development, design and office administration. While 57.4% reported a sense of achievement from satisfactory AI results, 52.1% cited the burden of learning new technology. Training was the most commonly selected organisational response to AI adoption, at 41.3%.

Why it matters

The numbers point to two sides of workplace AI: people may find it useful, while also being expected to acquire new skills. One worker in the article described feeling pressure when her employer displayed weekly AI-use scores, even though those scores were not part of formal performance reviews. Another argued that employers expecting staff to use AI should provide training and cover its costs.

These findings describe surveyed workers and reported experiences, not how every workplace operates. Still, they make the responsibility question concrete. “Learn AI” is an easy instruction to issue; time, training and a bill are rather less abstract.

Our read

AI skills may become ordinary workplace equipment, but the cost of learning them should not quietly become an employee’s personal subscription. Employers asking staff to use these tools have a strong case for providing practical training, rather than leaving workers to pay for weekend classes and hope they picked the right one.

What to watch

• Whether employers begin offering paid, hands-on AI training.
• Whether workplace AI-use scores become part of formal performance management.
• Whether future surveys find the same mix of perceived benefits and learning pressure.

Discussion spark: If employers expect staff to use AI, should they be required to fund training, or is keeping up with new tools part of an employee’s job?

Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.