Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, recently condemned the recently concluded deep-sea gas exploration in the East Sea with the promising structure 'Blue Whale' as a 'Blue Whale scam drilling.' He characterized the Blue Whale drilling project as a 'waste of budget' and criticized that using the funds to support artificial intelligence (AI) research would have been more effective.
During a Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly on the morning of the 7th, Lee noted, 'The state spent all the money it could have used to purchase 3,000 high-spec GPUs for AI research on a single Blue Whale scam drilling,' adding, 'If it hadn't been spent on scams, it probably would have helped Korean researchers.'
He pointed out, 'Overseas corporations say one place has 30,000 to 70,000, while Korea is said to have only a few thousand.' He emphasized, 'Korea needs to conduct AI research, but due to a shortage of GPUs, researchers are going abroad,' and then added, 'It's really unfortunate that we are involved in scams like (Blue Whale).'
According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC), the drilling operation for the promising Blue Whale structure, which started on Dec. 20 last year, concluded on the 4th. However, the Ministry determined that the Blue Whale structure lacks economic viability. Some gas indications were detected at the drilling site related to Blue Whale, but the scale was assessed to be minimal.