Aju Press - Asia News Hub

Journalist

Kim Dong-young김동영

ReporterSamsung Biologics, CJ CheilJedang, LG Chem, Celltrion, Naver, Krafton, Nexon, Hyundai Mobis etc. & energy, game, food, bio, petrochemical, AI

Kim Dong-young is a bilingual journalist at AJU Press (AJP), covering Korean tech, energy, and bio/pharma.
He reports from the field at events like CES and APEC, runs AJP's YouTube channels,
and is pursuing a master's at Sogang's MOT program. "I try everything in this AI era that can improve yet preserve the facts. Journalism still serves as my core."

Latest by Kim Dong-young

S.Korea swelters as Yangsan hits record 42.5 degrees Celsius SEOUL, August 02 (AJP) - South Korea buckled under its most brutal heat in more than a century on Sunday, as the southeastern city of Yangsan reached 42.5 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever recorded since modern observation began in 1904. The reading, logged at 1:26 p.m., pushed the country past 42 degrees for the first time in 122 years and marked the third straight day that a national record had fallen. Yangsan has now topped 40 degrees for five consecutive days. Other cities in the southeast baked alongside it. Gimhae and the North district of Busan both reached 40.6 degrees, while Gwangyang in South Jeolla province hit 40.3 degrees and Gyeongju climbed to 40.2 degrees. The Korea Meteorological Administration attributed the searing heat to twin high-pressure systems, the North Pacific and Tibetan highs, blanketing the peninsula at once, combined with intense sunshine, a foehn wind effect and Yangsan's basin terrain. As of Sunday, cumulative heat-related illnesses since mid-May reached about 1,781 cases nationwide, including 13 deaths, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Crowds fled to the coast and to water parks, packing beaches such as Busan's Haeundae, where wait times at some attractions stretched to more than three hours. Farmers, meanwhile, hauled water to parched fields and set out ice for livestock, as tens of thousands of poultry and farm animals perished across the south. In the capital, the weather agency upgraded the last remaining district to a heat wave warning at 11 a.m., placing all of Seoul under the alert, while a tropical night advisory entered its ninth consecutive day. The city expanded its response task force to eight teams and checked in on hundreds of vulnerable elderly residents. "With the heat wave dragging on, the risk of harm to citizens from illnesses such as heat stroke is growing," said Choi Jin-seok, head of Seoul's disaster and safety office. "We will operate our response system so that heat measures work without a gap in the field." 2026-08-02 15:35:09
Korea seeks emergency power to slash leverage on single-stock funds SEOUL, August 02 (AJP) - South Korea's financial regulators are moving to arm themselves with emergency authority to unilaterally cut the leverage ratio on single-stock funds, escalating a campaign to tame the wild swings that have gripped the country's stock market. Industry sources say Sunday that the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service they would push an amendment to the capital markets act that would allow authorities to act swiftly to stabilize markets in a crisis. The move follows a punishing bout of volatility fueled by a rush into semiconductor stocks and the leveraged products tied to them. At the heart of the proposed amendment is a legal basis for regulators to directly lower the leverage on single-stock products, now fixed at two times, when markets turn turbulent. Officials are understood to have drawn on the example of Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission, which recently permitted flexible adjustment of leverage on listed products. Regulators are also weighing further trading curbs, including suspensions in cases of unfair trading. In tandem, authorities plan to unify the single-stock leverage investment ceiling at about 20 percent of each account across brokerages, curbing the concentration of funds at particular firms and reining in outsized bets by wealthy investors. Mandatory mock trading, mirroring the futures and derivatives markets, will be added to existing investor education. The market has already cooled sharply. After the basic deposit requirement was tripled to 30 million won ($20,790) from 10 million won on July 31, turnover in the 16 single-stock leverage products, including inverse funds, plunged to about 3 trillion won on the first day, roughly a quarter of the 12.4 trillion won traded the previous session. 2026-08-02 12:36:57
Seoul named global youth's favorite city for fifth straight year SEOUL, August 02 (AJP) - Seoul has been named the world's favorite city among younger travelers for a fifth consecutive year, the city government said, extending a run that has burnished the South Korean capital's standing as a global tourism draw. The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Tourism Organization said Sunday that the city topped the "Favorite Worldwide City" category in the 2026 The Trazees awards, run by U.S.-based travel media outlet Trazee Travel. Dublin, Hong Kong, London and Athens rounded out the top five. The winners were chosen by readers aged 25 to 40 — the business-travel core of the millennial and Gen Z market that the outlet targets. An awards ceremony is scheduled for Sunday in Chicago. For its unbroken run since 2022, Seoul also received a "Quint Status" honor given to repeat winners and entered the awards' hall of fame, according to the city government, which said the recognition reflected a broader shift in how young tourists travel. Where visitors once ticked off famous landmarks, they now chase local, everyday experiences, the city said — sampling K-fashion and K-beauty at Seongsu-dong pop-up stores, tasting street food at Gwangjang Market and hunting for vintage finds in Dongmyo. The music and alley culture of Hongdae and Euljiro, along with urban hikes up Bukhansan Mountain and Achasan Mountain, were also cited as distinctive draws. Foreign visits climbed at several sites last year, led by the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, up 12.1 percent, followed by Achasan at 11.8 percent and about 10 percent gains at Hongdae, Gwangjang Market and other spots, the city said, citing figures from the Seoul AI Foundation. "Building on Seoul's unique lifestyle culture and content, we will grow into the global tourism city that people around the world most want to visit," said Cho Sung-ho, head of the city's tourism and sports bureau, adding that Seoul would expand experience-based tourism and step up its MICE marketing. 2026-08-02 11:44:36
Samsung slips into the red as LG's appliances hold the 1 trillion won line SEOUL, August 02 (AJP) -South Korea's two largest electronics makers saw their consumer appliance businesses move sharply apart in the first half of 2026, as LG Electronics posted a second straight quarter of profit above 1 trillion won ($693 million) while Samsung Electronics slipped into the red. The operating profit gap between the two firms' comparable home appliance, television and air-conditioning operations came to about 990 billion won in the first quarter and 1.15 trillion won in the second, industry data showed Sunday, even as their combined revenue in those segments ran at broadly similar levels. LG's home appliance, TV and eco-solution divisions together booked 14.92 trillion won in second-quarter revenue and 1.14 trillion won in operating profit, holding above the trillion-won mark after a similar showing in the prior quarter. Samsung's television and appliance operations, by contrast, swung to a 10 billion won operating loss from a 200 billion won profit, despite revenue edging up to about 14.5 trillion won. Both companies faced the same headwinds of softening consumer demand, heavier logistics costs and rising memory-chip prices, but analysts said differences in business structure drove the split. The gap was seen widest in home appliances, a fixed-cost-heavy manufacturing business where factory utilization and cost competitiveness swing profitability sharply when demand weakens. The two firms struck contrasting tones on their July 30 earnings calls. Samsung said premium and AI product sales lifted revenue but rising component costs eroded margins, while LG credited expanded appliance and premium TV sales, a richer high-value-added product mix, cost improvements and one-off tariff refunds for its gains. LG's second-quarter business-to-business revenue rose 5 percent from a year earlier to 6.5 trillion won and subscription revenue climbed 5 percent to 660 billion won, while its AI data center cooling business drew orders topping 600 billion won in the first half, underscoring the portfolio shift that has separated the two rivals' fortunes. 2026-08-02 10:36:43
AI coding tools thin out junior developer ranks, Gartner warns SEOUL, August 02 (AJP) - Hiring of entry-level software developers has fallen sharply as companies lean on artificial-intelligence coding tools to handle routine work, a shift that research firm Gartner warned that could drain the industry's future talent pool. Employment of software developers aged 22 to 25 has dropped by about 20 percent from its late-2022 peak, according to a Stanford University Digital Economy Lab study of payroll records, coinciding with the arrival of ChatGPT and a wave of AI-assisted coding tools. Separate research from the Linux Foundation found entry-level roles bearing the brunt of AI-driven hiring cuts. Yet the premise that developers are merely coders is a flawed one, the data suggests. A study of Microsoft engineers by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers found that writing and reading code occupies just 15 percent of a developer's workday, with the remainder spent on collaboration, planning, review and testing. AI-generated code has also proven far from turnkey. In the 2025 State of Web Development AI survey, 76 percent of developers said they rewrite more than half of the code the tools produce, citing verification and error detection as their toughest challenges. Trimming junior ranks carries a hidden cost, as senior engineers absorb the maintenance and oversight that juniors once handled. Engineering-intelligence firm Jellyfish found that 46 percent of engineering managers expect developer burnout to worsen as a result, while the average COBOL specialist — a scarce, legacy skill — now commands about $115,000 a year, a sign of how thinning supply drives compensation higher. Analysts argue the remedy is to elevate junior roles rather than eliminate them, shifting new hires toward testing, validation and system-level judgment while handing them explicit ownership of reviewing AI output. Cheaper AI-enabled prototyping, they add, makes junior-led "tiny teams" a fast route from raw productivity to business results. "Slowing junior-level hiring could lead to significant pitfalls, including inhibiting knowledge transfer, restricting the internal talent pipeline, and limiting recruitment to more expensive and competitive senior roles," said Aliyah Camacho, a principal analyst at Gartner. The firm predicts that by 2028, organizations relying on AI to cut junior roles will hollow out their own software engineering talent pipeline, ultimately stalling the innovation those cuts were meant to accelerate. 2026-08-02 09:34:05
LG CNS Q2 profit falls despite higher revenue on cost pressure SEOUL, July 31 (AJP) - LG CNS posted a 9.2 percent drop in second-quarter operating profit, as rising costs outweighed steady sales growth at the South Korean IT services provider. According to a preliminary regulatory filing released Friday, operating profit fell to 127.9 billion won ($89.1 million) in the April to June quarter from 140.8 billion won a year earlier, even as revenue climbed 4.2 percent to 1.52 trillion won. Net income rose 19.9 percent to 118.7 billion won. The firm said that the revenue gain was driven by expanding external contracts across all business lines, particularly in artificial intelligence and cloud services, which the firm has flagged as its core growth engine. In its cloud business, LG CNS said it had won more than 1 trillion won in large-scale data-center contracts and cemented its position as the country's top operator of hyperscale AI data centers under the design, build and operation model. "External sales rose across every division and led our top-line growth," the company said, adding that it recently signed a roughly 190 billion won physical-AI infrastructure deal with affiliate LG Electronics to supply humanoid-robot training platforms and GPU-based systems. For the first half, revenue rose 6.1 percent to 2.84 trillion won and operating profit edged up 1.1 percent to 222.1 billion won, with AI and cloud accounting for about 59 percent of total sales. Shares of LG CNS traded at 63,700 won per stock at 10:02 a.m., 9.45 percent higher than the previous session. 2026-07-31 10:05:15
Samyang Foods joins culture ministry to lure Buldak fans to Korea SEOUL, July 31 (AJP) - South Korea's culture ministry announced it would sign a memorandum of understanding with instant-noodle maker Samyang Foods to promote overseas tourism, seeking to convert the global appetite for Korean food into visits to the country. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Friday the deal is designed to channel the worldwide popularity of K-food into tangible travel demand, pairing Korean tourism advertising with Samyang's products and content across large-scale online and offline promotions. Under the agreement, consumers who encounter Samyang products at local retail channels around the world would be steered toward Korea's tourism appeal, with QR codes embedded in Buldak stir-fried noodles and sauce products linking to travel information and events. The partnership will debut at the "Love Korea 2026" in Bangkok from Aug. 21 to 23, where a dedicated space will offer noodle tastings alongside Korean cultural experiences and games. The two sides will also run a joint campaign linking their official online channels. "We expect the government's Korean tourism content and the private sector's overseas marketing capabilities to create a synergy that raises the national brand," Culture Minister Chae Hwi-young said, adding that he hoped the effort would help Korea emerge as an "irreplaceable travel destination" for the world. 2026-07-31 09:15:34
Korea bets on being indispensable in U.S.-China AI rivalry SEOUL, July 30 (AJP) - When the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week barred new imports of Chinese-made humanoid robots, it marked another escalation in the technology war that began with semiconductors and rare earths. More importantly, it showed that strategic competition has entered the age of physical artificial intelligence — where robots, AI models and communications networks are increasingly treated as national-security assets. For South Korea, the decision also sharpened a larger question: how does a middle power preserve its strategic autonomy when the world's two largest economies are steadily forcing countries to choose sides? The FCC on Tuesday (local time) placed foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, along with connected power inverters, on its national-security "Covered List," effectively blocking new models from receiving the authorization required to enter the U.S. market. Machines already operating in the field remain unaffected, but the door has largely closed for future Chinese entrants. "Following President Trump's leadership, the FCC will continue to do our part to secure America's critical supply chains, and, with today's action, the FCC is acting in lock step with our national security agencies to do just that," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said. The unnamed target was unmistakable: China. The country accounts for an estimated 85 percent of the global humanoid robot market, and the restrictions fall most heavily on Unitree Robotics, whose backflipping G1 humanoid has become the symbol of China's rapidly advancing robotics industry. For Seoul, the story began with dirt. China's rare-earth export controls in April 2025 — tightened until U.S.-bound shipments of several critical minerals briefly fell to zero — demonstrated that supply-chain dependence itself had become a geopolitical weapon. Washington's response has steadily broadened from securing access to minerals toward reshaping the entire technology ecosystem. The latest robot restrictions are part of that broader strategy. This month, the Trump administration also convened a coalition of more than 20 countries, including Britain, Germany and Japan, to establish the security architecture and technical standards for sixth-generation wireless networks. The initiative, known as the Call to Action for 6G Leadership and Security, aims to ensure that the next communications infrastructure is designed largely outside China's technological sphere. "Today's action recognizes that 6G will be dramatically different from 5G, and that advancing U.S. and allied leadership requires a dramatically different playbook," said Arielle Roth, administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Taken together, the measures illustrate how Washington's strategy has expanded from controlling critical minerals to securing the entire AI technology stack — including semiconductors, communications networks, robotics and frontier AI models. Rare earths, batteries, advanced chips and artificial intelligence are increasingly treated not as separate industries but as components of a single strategic ecosystem. This is where South Korea occupies a different position from most middle powers. Rather than standing on the sidelines, Korea sits at the center of several supply chains Washington is trying to secure. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix dominate the world's advanced memory market, supplying the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that underpin Nvidia's AI accelerators and much of today's generative AI infrastructure. That makes Seoul a partner Washington cannot easily sideline, even as strategic competition with Beijing intensifies. The importance of that relationship was evident last week in San Francisco, where President Lee Jae Myung unveiled what his office described as an "AI declaration" before meeting the leaders of America's most influential AI companies. Lee dined with Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, alongside the heads of Samsung Electronics, SK Group and Hyundai Motor Group. "The Republic of Korea intends to dramatically expand its investment in artificial intelligence going forward, so we look forward to Anthropic's particular interest, investment and contribution," Lee said. The same pattern is emerging in physical AI. Ironically, the strongest Western challenger to China's Unitree is Boston Dynamics — an American robotics pioneer wholly owned by South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group. Its Atlas humanoid entered commercial deployment this year on Hyundai production lines, creating an unusual industrial identity: a robot designed in the United States, commercialized by a Korean conglomerate and positioned as part of the Western response to China's robotics rise. A similar dynamic is unfolding in frontier AI. In May, OpenAI expanded the government-focused tier of its Daybreak cybersecurity initiative to South Korea, making it the third participating country after the United States and Canada, and one of the first in Asia. "The latest cyber AI capabilities must not remain confined to a select few," Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, said in Seoul, describing advanced AI security as a shared responsibility among trusted partners. Anthropic has adopted an even more selective approach. Its most capable model, Mythos, remains unavailable to the public and is shared only through Project Glasswing, an invitation-only program focused on autonomous vulnerability detection. In June, Anthropic expanded the initiative to roughly 150 organizations across about 15 countries. South Korea was among the beneficiaries, with the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and SK Telecom gaining early access. Yet the episode also underscored the limits of partnership. Barely a week after Korea joined the program, Anthropic temporarily suspended access to its most advanced models to comply with new U.S. export-control rules — a reminder that even close allies remain subject to policies ultimately written in Washington. Strategic value, however, does not eliminate vulnerability. South Korean manufacturers continue to rely heavily on Chinese processing of rare earths, while China remains one of their largest export markets. As Washington expands restrictions across more sectors, measures aimed primarily at Beijing inevitably create collateral risks for Korean companies operating between the world's two largest economies. For decades, South Korea prospered by navigating between competing powers. The AI era presents a different proposition. Rather than relying on neutrality alone, Seoul is increasingly betting on indispensability — supplying the memory chips, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity expertise and industrial capabilities that neither Washington nor Beijing can easily replace. Whether that strategy proves durable will depend on forces largely beyond Seoul's control. Yet as the technology rivalry moves from critical minerals to robots, frontier AI models and the infrastructure that connects them, becoming indispensable may offer South Korea a stronger form of strategic insurance than attempting to remain equidistant between two increasingly irreconcilable superpowers. 2026-07-30 14:59:28
ESS transition helps Samsung SDI swing to profit as peers lag SEOUL, July 30 (AJP) -Samsung SDI returned to the black in the second quarter, snapping seven consecutive quarters of operating losses as booming demand for energy storage systems powering AI data centers offset the prolonged electric-vehicle slowdown that continues to weigh on most Korean battery makers. According to regulatory filings released Thursday, the firm booked an operating profit of 203.8 billion won ($141.5 million) for the three months through June, reversing a loss of 397.8 billion won a year earlier and a first-quarter shortfall of 155.6 billion won. Revenue climbed 18.5 percent from a year earlier to 3.77 trillion won, while net profit vaulted to 471.6 billion won, up about 740 percent from the previous quarter. "We had originally expected a turnaround in the second half, but revenue growth and improving profitability came faster than anticipated, moving up the timing of our return to profit," said a Samsung SDI spokesperson, adding that it would keep pursuing sustainable growth and firmer margins. The battery division led the charge with an operating profit of 159.3 billion won, as sales of high-output cells for uninterruptible power supplies, backup battery units and power tools gained traction alongside brisk European electric-vehicle orders. Momentum also came from home. This month Samsung SDI cells were tapped for 21 of the 32 distribution lines in the government's first AI-based grid ESS program — about 66 percent of the volume, or roughly 420 megawatt-hours — the biggest share of any supplier and a lead over LG Energy Solution and SK On, positioning the firm ahead of a larger state ESS auction expected around September. Higher-margin products, expanding U.S. output and subsidies under the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit of the Inflation Reduction Act, together with tariff refunds, further sharpened profitability. The electronic-materials arm chipped in an operating profit of 44.5 billion won, up 34.8 percent, buoyed by resilient semiconductor-material sales and film used in foldable smartphones. The result stood in relief against rival LG Energy Solution, which earlier the same day reported second-quarter operating profit of 113.3 billion won — down 77 percent from a year earlier, though a recovery from a first-quarter loss, as North American energy-storage demand cushioned a punishing slump in electric-vehicle sales. For LG, government support did the heavy lifting: about 241 billion won in IRA tax credits masked what would otherwise have been a 127.7 billion won operating loss, underscoring how heavily Korea's battery makers still lean on Washington's subsidies. Samsung SDI said it expects earnings to keep improving in the second half, pledging to ramp up prismatic LFP battery output in the United States and expand capacity for power-storage and uninterruptible-supply products as the data-center build-out accelerates. Shares of Samsung SDI traded at 354,000 won per stock at 2:11 p.m., down by 2.75 percent from the previous session. 2026-07-30 14:27:53
Korea fines KT $37 mln over rogue base station breach SEOUL, July 30 (AJP) - South Korea's privacy watchdog has fined KT 53.98 billion won ($37.3 million) over a data breach in which rogue miniature base stations, or femtocells, were used to siphon the personal information of about 16,000 subscribers and route unauthorized micro-payments. The Personal Information Protection Commission said Thursday it had imposed the penalty at a plenary session the previous day, alongside corrective orders and a public disclosure order, and would separately file a criminal complaint against the carrier for deleting logs and giving false statements that obstructed the probe. Hackers extracted certificates from a lost KT femtocell and planted them in illicit devices to slip onto the carrier's mobile network, intercepting traffic that passed between users' handsets and the internal system, investigators found. They then combined the stolen data with names and birth dates to hijack payment verification texts and complete fraudulent purchases. The breach exposed the phone numbers and device identifiers of 16,647 subscribers, including budget-carrier users, while 368 people suffered about 240 million won in unauthorized charges, the commission said. KT had set the femtocell certificates to remain valid for a decade and imposed no restrictions on connecting IP addresses, allowing access through rival carriers or overseas networks, according to the regulator. It also failed to detect unauthorized connections, leaving hackers free to roam its internal network for roughly 11 months. "This security breach is an extremely critical matter directly tied to public trust in telecommunications services that are part of our daily lives," Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon said when the scheme first surfaced last year. The commission also referred rival LG Uplus to prosecutors for obstruction, saying the carrier had reinstalled operating systems and scrapped servers before the inquiry began, and vowed to tighten the law so firms that destroy evidence before a probe can face criminal charges or fines of up to 3 percent of total revenue. 2026-07-30 11:04:04