Did generative AI narrow the digital divide for immigrants in South Korea? A difference-in-differences study, 2019–2023

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence diffused rapidly after late 2022, raising the question of whether it would widen or narrow the digital divide for marginalized populations. We analyzed the Korean Digital Divide Survey across the transition, in 2019 and 2023, comparing three groups: the native-born Korean population, marriage immigrants, and North Korean migrants. The North Korean migrants provide a comparison for the language mechanism, a similarly marginalized group without a foreign-language barrier. Using weighted difference-in-differences with continuous-age adjustment, we found that the marriage-immigrant gap in AI use with the native-born Korean population closed and reversed, with marriage immigrants surpassing native-born Koreans (logit difference-in-differences 0.25, SE 0.12, p = .04, about 4 percentage points), while North Korean migrants did not converge (−0.13, SE 0.12, p = .30); the contrast between the two groups, the central test, was significant (0.38, SE 0.17, p = .02) and widened under full adjustment. Both marginalized groups became more positive about AI use and gained digital competency and social capital. The North Korean migrants gained even more competency, yet only the marriage immigrants converted these resources into use. The marriage-immigrant convergence was concentrated in the language-production domains, document writing and communication, where the language affordance is most direct, but North Korean migrants did not converge there. Mediation attributed the marriage-immigrant convergence chiefly to bridging social capital and digital competency; for North Korean migrants, the same resources predicted a convergence that did not occur. The pattern is most consistent with generative AI's language capability mattering for a group that operates across languages: the convergence was not shared by an equally marginalized native-speaking group and is not explained by a general narrowing of digital inclusion. Because the two migrant groups differ in more than language and proficiency is not measured, we interpret this as the most plausible explanation rather than a proven mechanism.