Nearly Half of New South Korean AI Models Based on Chinese Open Source, Led by Alibaba's Qwen
A Rockbridge Network report reveals that 49.3% of new generative language models published by South Korean developers on Hugging Face in early 2026 were based on Chinese open-source models, with Alibaba's Qwen accounting for 46.8%.
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According to a report by ZDNet Korea, the South Korean division of the Rockbridge Network published a study titled "How Chinese AI Is Used in Korea" on October 16, 2026. The analysis focused on 1,845 new generative language models publicly released by South Korean accounts on the Hugging Face platform between January and August 2026. The findings indicate that 49.3% of these models were derivatives based on Chinese open-source models, compared to 35.9% based on US models and only 14.9% based on domestic South Korean models.
Among Chinese open-source models, Alibaba's Qwen dominates the landscape. Of the 1,845 new models, 864 were built upon Qwen, representing 46.8% of the total, significantly outpacing Google's Gemma (14.7%) and Meta's Llama (13.8%). In contrast, DeepSeek, despite high public awareness in South Korea, served as the base for only 1.0% of new models. The report attributes Qwen's competitive advantage to its wide range of model sizes, support for 119 languages, and extensive developer tooling.
However, there is a marked divergence between developer ecosystem choices and end-user or enterprise behavior. As of July 2026, no Chinese services appeared in the top ten AI chatbot apps by downloads in South Korea, and an analysis of public GitHub repositories from 36 major South Korean companies found no direct references to Chinese models. A survey of 102 small and medium-sized enterprises cited data leakage concerns (80.2%) and opaque personal information handling (67.7%) as the primary reasons for avoiding Chinese AI models, rather than performance issues.