The AI Highway: KREONET Opens a New Path for Science
In the age of the AI revolution, the Korea Research Environment Open Network (KREONET) is Korea’s ultra-high-performance national research network—an “AI highway” that connects AI infrastructure and carries research data. By uniting supercomputing, large-scale research data, and advanced research instruments, KREONET has established itself as the core national research infrastructure accelerating AI-driven scientific and technological.
KREONET began in 1988 with Korea’s research networking program. Since introducing Korea’s first national-wide TCP/IP-based internet service, KREONET has evolved continuously, launching new initiatives to meet the demands of each era: the national grid network, the Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development, the Korea Lambda Exchange Node (KRLight), the software-defined wide-area research network (KREONET-S), quantum-secured communication, and the National Data Exchange Node (NDeX).
As large-scale scientific research built on artificial intelligence, high-performance computing (HPC), and massive datasets has come into full swing, advancing the ultra-high-capacity network infrastructure that binds these resources together has become as essential to breakthrough research.
In 2026, KREONET established national backbone networks with capacities of up to 1.6 Tbps domestically and 400 Gbps internationally, providing the infrastructure for new discoveries in data-intensive science. KREONET has also begun developing a software-based heterogeneous wired–wireless integrated access gateway (X-Gateway) as a strategic national research project, aimed at realizing an ultra-low-latency converged networking environment—a further step toward becoming the indispensable research infrastructure driving AI-based innovation.
These capabilities have already contributed to major scientific achievements. From the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2013 and the first detection of gravitational waves in 2017 to the first image of the M87 black hole in 2019, KREONET has served as the data highway at pivotal moments of discovery, in close collaboration with research networks around the world.
KREONET will continue to support Korean researchers across high-energy physics, weather and climate, nuclear fusion, advanced biotechnology, astronomy and space science, quantum communications, and research to redefine the second.
For more than 35 years, KREONET has provided the underlying connectivity for scientific and technological innovation in Korea. Now, in the era of the AI revolution, it seeks to become a central pillar of the AI highway—ultra-fast, ultra-low-latency, and ultra-precise—in step with a new research paradigm built on large-scale AI computing infrastructure and the vast data pouring out of big science.
We will advance KREONET as a world-class national research network, providing global leadership in accelerating scientific discovery and AI-driven innovation in science and technology.
Buseung Cho
Direct , KREONET
Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI)