[Edaily Reporter Shin Young-bin] Amid ongoing controversy over the blocking of access to top-tier artificial intelligence (AI) models, Anthropic—which has officially announced its entry into the Korean market—stated, “We are confident that model access will resume within a few days.” However, the company avoided making specific comments regarding reports involving Korean telecom carriers and matters related to “Project Glasswing.”

Anthropic held a press conference on the 17th at the Conrad Seoul Hotel in Yeouido, Seoul, to announce the official opening of its Seoul office. The event was attended by Chris Chauri, Head of Anthropic International, and Choi Ki-young, Representative of Anthropic Korea.

“Model Access to Resume Within Days”…Silence on Telecom Company Allegations

The press conference focused heavily on questions regarding the recent controversy over access restrictions to Anthropic’s top-tier models, making this issue the main topic of discussion.

Previously, Anthropic had made its top-tier model, “Mitos 5,” and its high-performance model for general users, “Fable 5,” available to overseas partners, but controversy arose after access was subsequently restricted for some users. During this process, The Washington Post (WP) reported that the U.S. government had identified a South Korean telecom company suspected of having ties to China while reviewing the list of participants in Anthropic’s early access program.

Regarding concerns about bypassing safety guardrails—which were cited as the reason for the recent access restrictions—Chief Executive Chris Chauri explained that this involved “a very limited jailbreak scenario.” He emphasized that this refers to attempts to circumvent AI safety mechanisms under specific conditions and is not a structural flaw unique to Anthropic’s models.

He stated, “This is the type of issue that can be publicly observed in all models released to the market over the past six months,” adding, “I am confident that the model will be available again within a few days.”

Regarding concerns that export controls applied exclusively to Anthropic could increase vendor risk for domestic clients, he drew a clear line, stating, “This is a very limited case.” He added, “This is an issue that could apply to any company, and I do not anticipate that export controls will continue indefinitely.”

However, he remained tight-lipped about specific details. Regarding whether access had been blocked for Korean partners participating in Project “Glasswing,” the conditions for resuming access, and allegations reported by WP involving Korean telecom carriers, Director Cha Woo-ri said, “As this is a rapidly evolving situation, I will not comment on it at this stage.”

When asked about additional companies or institutions participating in the “Glasswing” project, he replied, “I will not comment on that at this time,” and added, “Please refer to the Anthropic blog for details.”

He also declined to answer a question about whether Amazon’s interests might have influenced this matter. Amazon is a major investor and cloud partner of Anthropic, and given that AWS has its own AI models, some analysts suggest that the company has complex interests at stake in the enterprise AI market.

No Announcement on Resellers… “No Exclusive SI Partnerships”

Regarding domestic

reseller

partnerships, the company stated, “We have nothing to announce today.” Cha Woo-ri, Head of Anthropic Korea, said, “Anthropic is exploring relationships of various forms and scales, and a reseller model may be possible in the future.”

Regarding system integration (SI) partnerships, CEO Choi said, “Things are unfolding differently from the past, when we designated specific channel partners,” adding, “What matters is who we can achieve business results with more quickly.”

He continued, “We introduced LG CNS because they moved quickly and demonstrated results,” explaining, “There are absolutely no exclusive partnerships. We work together with customers to determine the optimal partner based on the results they seek.”

Naver, LG CNS, and Samsung SDS Expand Adoption of Claude

Anthropic also unveiled case studies of major Korean companies adopting Claude on the same day.

LG CNS (#LGCNS) is rolling out Claude to thousands of employees in phases and applying it to software development and the provision of technical solutions to customers. Samsung SDS (#SamsungSDS) is also expanding the scope of Claude’s use among Samsung Electronics employees.

Naver (#NAVER) has adopted the AI coding agent “Claude Code” across its entire engineering organization. Anthropic highlighted this as one of the largest enterprise adoptions in Asia. Nexon is also utilizing Claude Code for coding, reviewing, and deploying code for its live-service games.

Hanwha Solutions is providing Claude to its global employees via AWS Bedrock, and Channel Corporation, the operator of ChannelTalk, has integrated Claude into its customer service AI platform. In the research and public interest sectors, the company is providing free Claude accounts to up to 60 researchers affiliated with the National AI Research Hub (NAIRL) and is also supporting Good Neighbors’ use of Claude.

Regarding the strategy for the Korean market, CEO Choi stated that the company will pursue improvements in Korean language performance, address data sovereignty and compliance issues, and review data residency options. He also explained that the company plans to expand its partner ecosystem by collaborating with major cloud service providers (CSPs) such as AWS, Google Cloud, and, in the future, Microsoft.

Regarding the Korean market, General Manager Cha Woo-ri said, “It is one of the fastest-growing markets for Anthropic globally,” adding, “Given Korea’s strong technology and developer base, I believe its per-capita usage ranking could quickly rise into the single digits.”

Regarding the sovereign AI trend, CEO Choi stated, “Cooperation plays a much greater role than competition,” and added, “We will support a safe and practical AI transition in collaboration with Korean companies, research institutions, and the developer ecosystem.”