South Korea has secured access to Anthropic's highly anticipated cybersecurity-focused artificial intelligence model, Mythos, marking a significant step in the country's efforts to strengthen its digital defenses amid growing concerns that AI-powered cyber threats could become more sophisticated and harder to contain.

The development places South Korea among a select group of nations participating in Anthropic's Project Glasswing initiative, an international program designed to deploy frontier AI systems for identifying, assessing, and helping remediate cybersecurity vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by malicious actors.

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT made the announcement on Wednesday, saying that the government-backed Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) had successfully secured access to Mythos through its participation in the project.

The ministry said it had been working closely with Anthropic and confirmed KISA's involvement in the initiative, which seeks to harness advanced AI models to detect software weaknesses at a scale and speed that would be difficult for human analysts to match.

The announcement follows a report by the Financial Times that Anthropic plans to broaden access to Mythos to approximately 150 organizations across more than 15 countries. According to the report, some of South Korea's largest technology companies are included in the expansion, including Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and SK Telecom.

The move follows the rapid emergence of cybersecurity as one of the most strategically important applications of advanced AI. While much of the public focus has centered on generative AI tools for content creation, software development, and productivity, governments and corporations are increasingly concerned about the technology's ability to uncover software flaws, network weaknesses, and security vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed.

That capability presents both opportunities and risks. Security teams can use AI to strengthen defenses and identify weaknesses before attackers do. At the same time, the same technologies could potentially enable cybercriminals and hostile state actors to discover and exploit vulnerabilities far more efficiently than in the past.

The issue has become particularly relevant for South Korea, which hosts some of the world's most important semiconductor, electronics, and telecommunications companies. As global competition over advanced technologies intensifies, these firms have become increasingly attractive targets for cyber espionage, intellectual property theft, and state-backed hacking campaigns.

The country's semiconductor sector alone occupies a critical position in global supply chains. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are among the world's largest memory chip producers, supplying components essential to artificial intelligence infrastructure, data centers, smartphones, and advanced computing systems.

Access to Mythos could therefore provide South Korean institutions with a powerful new tool to identify vulnerabilities across critical digital infrastructure, industrial systems, and enterprise networks.

The ministry said South Korea would continue pursuing efforts to strengthen national cybersecurity capabilities by leveraging frontier AI technologies while also investing in domestic AI-driven security solutions.

Governments, as a strategy, are seeking to avoid dependence on foreign technology while still benefiting from the most advanced AI systems available globally. Policymakers view cybersecurity capabilities as a matter of national security, particularly as cyber threats become more automated and sophisticated.

The announcement also comes amid growing international debate over access to advanced AI models. European banks, technology firms, and government agencies have recently expressed concerns that restrictions on frontier AI systems could create competitive disadvantages in cybersecurity preparedness.

By securing participation in Project Glasswing, South Korea gains early access to technology that many organizations worldwide are still seeking to obtain. That access could help the country strengthen cyber resilience while giving local companies and researchers valuable experience working with some of the most advanced AI security tools currently available.

Following the release of Anthropic's Mythos, AI has increasingly become a central component of both cyber defense and cyber offense. Thus, initiatives such as Project Glasswing are being viewed not simply as technology programs, but as strategic assets in a global competition to secure critical digital infrastructure.