The finding came in a report by Yoon Jeong-hye, head of the employment trends analysis team at the Korea Employment Information Service, published in the institute's quarterly journal released Monday.
Researchers combined a 2025 survey of Korean workers, employment insurance records and overseas studies to gauge each occupation's exposure.
Legal support clerks topped the ranking, followed by patent and legal professionals, with reporters and press professionals placing a striking third.
Government administration specialists, telemarketers, accountants and tax appraisers rounded out a high-exposure tier dominated by desk-bound roles centered on interpreting text or crunching quantitative data.
At the other end, jobs demanding physical presence such as platers, butchers and other hands-on production, construction and face-to-face service workers clustered in the low- or no-exposure bands, largely insulated from the technology's reach.
Of the 15.28 million people enrolled in employment insurance last year, about 2.92 million, or 19.1 percent, worked in highly exposed occupations, the report found.
Accountants and bookkeeping clerks in that tier have already seen their ranks shrink steadily in recent months.
The exposure skews young as the average age in the high-exposure group was 40.2, below the overall average of 45.7. More than half of insured workers in their 30s, 53.1 percent, held jobs in the medium- or high-exposure categories.
"We need to keep a close watch on the employment structure of young people, where the impact of AI's spread is likely to be concentrated, and of customer-guidance and counseling roles where generative AI and large language models are being rapidly adopted," Yoon said.
AJP Takeaways
• Legal support clerks ranked as the South Korean occupation most exposed to artificial intelligence, followed by lawyers, with reporters and press professionals third, in an analysis by the Korea Employment Information Service published in its quarterly journal in 2026.
• About 2.92 million people, or 19.1 percent of South Korea's 15.28 million employment insurance subscribers, worked in highly AI-exposed occupations in 2025, and the average age in that group was 40.2 years, below the overall average of 45.7.
• More than half of insured South Korean workers in their 30s, or 53.1 percent, held jobs classified as medium- or high-exposure to AI, concentrating the technology's potential impact on younger cohorts.
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