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84% of manufacturers have adopted or plan to adopt ‘physical AI’ — expected productivity gain averages 31.9%
A Korea Enterprises Federation survey. And yet the biggest thing holding adoption back was not technology — it was ‘we don’t know whether we’ll get the investment back’.
(47.0% adopted + 37.0% planning)
A survey of 100 manufacturers with 500 or more employees, conducted for the Korea Enterprises Federation (KEF) by Southern Post, found that eight in ten Korean manufacturers have either already adopted physical AI or plan to. The findings were published on 20 August.
Physical AI here means AI combined with physical systems such as robots or automated equipment to carry out actual work. The main types are humanoid, autonomous-driving, drone, and automated guided vehicle (AGV) or autonomous mobile robot (AMR) systems.
What is already running differs from what is planned next
47.0% of respondents said they had deployed physical AI in manufacturing processes, either in production or as a pilot, and 37.0% said they had not yet adopted it but planned to. By company size, the figure was 88.5% for firms with 1,000 or more employees against 68.2% for those under 1,000 — a gap of more than 20 percentage points.
The interesting part is the type. Companies that have already adopted mostly use AGV/AMR systems (63.8%) — that is, automation that moves things. Companies planning to adopt, by contrast, put humanoid systems (64.9%) at the top of their list. There is a considerable gap between what is actually running today and what is expected next.
Among current adopters, the main application areas were (multiple responses) assembly and production processes at 66.0%, followed by logistics, transport and warehouse management at 57.4%.
Expected benefits: productivity first, then ‘we cannot find people’
- Improved productivity and performance — 45.2%
- Relief from staffing difficulties such as recruitment shortages — 26.2%
- Preventing industrial accidents and reducing risk — 22.6%
The outlook on jobs is bleak. The most common response, at 61.9%, was that adopting and expanding physical AI would shrink total employment; 34.5% expected no significant change, and just 3.6% expected growth.
At the level of the national economy, though, the assessment reverses. Asked on a ten-point scale about the positive impact on problems such as a shrinking workforce and falling productivity, 79.8% rated the positive impact high (7 or above), against 4.8% who rated it low (3 or below).
The real obstacle was not technology
The ordering of the difficulties cited is the most worthwhile part of this survey.
- Risk from technical instability and unreliable systems — 34.5%
- Uncertainty about return on investment — 31.0%
- Union or worker opposition to adoption — 27.4%
First and second are separated by just 3.5 percentage points. And second and third — uncertain returns, and internal opposition — are not engineering problems. They are problems of decision-making and persuasion. Two of the three sit outside technology entirely.
Lee Seung-yong, head of KEF’s economic analysis team, said that “relevant regulations should be examined closely and a range of corporate support measures actively backed, so that the positive effects physical AI can bring are maximised.”
What this means for Korean teams — SurfingBear editorial
The practical conclusion from this survey is a single one. What blocks adoption is not technical validation but numerical validation. Uncertainty over return on investment landing second at 31.0% is another way of saying there is nothing to attach to the approval request.
So it is usually safer to invert the order — rather than drawing up a company-wide adoption plan first, turn the repetition count and time taken for one job into numbers first, and let those numbers set the scope. Read the 31.9% in the survey for what it is, too: an expectation, not a measurement.
The population for this survey is 100 manufacturers with 500 or more employees. These are not figures you can transplant onto SMEs or non-manufacturing businesses.
To check this against your own numbers first — the AI ROI calculator works out your break-even point, and the automation finder identifies which steps can be automated and the time saving to expect. Both are free and need no signup.
Sources
- Yonhap News, “Eight in ten manufacturers have adopted or plan to adopt physical AI”, 2026.08.20 — read the original
- News1, “84% of manufacturers adopting physical AI… expect productivity up an average 32%”, 2026.08.20 — read the original
- Underlying survey: Korea Enterprises Federation and Southern Post, ‘Survey on physical AI adoption and perceptions’, 100 manufacturers with 500 or more employees
Every figure above is quoted as reported in the sources cited. SurfingBear has not estimated or recalculated any of them. The productivity figure is given as the survey’s average of 31.9%; the ‘32%’ in the News1 headline is that figure rounded. The ‘What this means for Korean teams’ section is SurfingBear editorial interpretation, not a claim made in the original reporting.
Start with the numbers the decision needs
The 2-week AX assessment analyses your current processes and documents where automation is possible, in what priority, and how much time it should save — in a form you can attach to an approval request as it stands.