AI adoption among South Korean companies rose to 58% from 48% last year, according to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) report commissioned from Strand Partners. The survey of 1,000 South Korean business leaders and 1,000 members of the public found that about 624,000 companies adopted AI over the past year. Among adopters, 81% reported productivity improvements, 58% reported revenue growth and companies saved an average of 14 hours per week. Advanced AI use more than doubled to 26%, while the share of companies using AI only for core tasks fell to 54%. The report also describes an emerging agent economy in which AI systems can set prices, purchase data and APIs, execute payments, issue refunds and coordinate tasks. AWS said enterprise application integration for AI agents could rise from below 5% at the end of 2025 to 40% by the end of this year. Yet only 27% of companies have a formal comprehensive AI strategy, 24% have consistent AI performance metrics, and just 8% of companies aware of agentic AI have fully deployed it. AWS also highlighted physical AI as a potential strength for South Korea, although only 6% of companies have fully deployed it.