AI, Team Lee hopes, will rid Seoul of the need to do the hard work of raising productivity, leveling corporate playing fields, empowering women and creating more economic space for startup companies to disrupt the economy. Perhaps Team Lee is right that AI is the miracle cure for all that ails his economy.

Yet succumbing to hubris is now more dangerous than ever. Much of the AI energy angling to transform Korea flows through the family-owned conglomerates that have lorded it over the economy for decades. This is sure to set back efforts to reduce the concentration of economic power in these so-called chaebols. Should the AI trade run out of gas, the fallout will be more spectacular for Korea than it ever needed to be.

This hubris is showing up virtually everywhere in Seoul. Lee’s Democratic Party, for example, has been mulling using AI profits to fund a “people’s dividend” to reduce inequality. This, however, seems more Band-Aid than recipe to raise Korea’s economic game.

Korea isn’t alone, of course. Taiwan’s stock market just overtook India to become the globe’s fifth largest. Only the U.S., China, Japan and Hong Kong sit higher. It’s quite a feat for an economy of just 23 million people. The economy that Taiwan just surpassed in stock market capitalization terms — India — has a population 60 times larger.

A decade ago, news that Korean auto exports fell 10% in a quarter would be something of a national crisis. But no problem these days. At one point this week, the Kospi was up 100% for 2026, putting it in league with the Nasdaq 100 Index’s 102% increase in 1999. That was just before the dot-com bubble burst.

There’s no telling whether Korea’s 216% jump over the last 12 months makes sense. But when major stock bourses routinely trade like cryptocurrencies or meme stocks, Asia might have a problem.