President Moon Jae-in presented his vision to foster South Korea's artificial intelligence(AI) sector as a key strategic industry to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Speaking at a major annual tech conference in Seoul on Monday, Moon vowed to turn South Korea into an AI powerhouse by building on the country's prowess in the information communications and technology(ICT) field.

Moon said the government will put forward by the end of the year a new national strategy on AI based on the country's ICT and manufacturing technologies and accumulated data.

The proposed initiative is in line with other future-oriented industries the administration has vowed to foster, including non-memory system semiconductors, next-generation vehicles and biohealth.

A presidential official said Seoul is pushing to establish AI graduate programs at five major universities within the year and to set up a department on AI at the Ministry of Science and ICT.

Seoul has earmarked one-point-seven trillion won of next year's budget for data, network and AI sectors, up 50 percent from this year.