Amazon Web Services — Seoul Region (AP Northeast 2)

AWS’s Seoul region (AP Northeast 2), launched in January 2016, is one of Amazon’s fastest-growing cloud regions globally. South Korea’s position as a semiconductor powerhouse — home to Samsung and SK Hynix, the world’s largest memory chip manufacturers — makes it a natural hub for AI compute infrastructure. The Seoul region hosts AWS’s full AI service stack: SageMaker for model training, Amazon Bedrock for foundation model access, and AWS Trainium chips for cost-efficient AI training. Major Korean conglomerates (chaebols) including Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and SK have committed hundreds of millions in AWS cloud AI spending. In 2024, AWS announced a $6 billion investment in South Korea through 2028 to expand its Seoul infrastructure and launch a second Korean region. The expansion includes dedicated AI training clusters and Bedrock capacity to support Korean AI startups. Samsung has a strategic partnership with AWS to run Galaxy AI features on AWS infrastructure. AWS is working with KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation) on renewable energy procurement for Korean operations.