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

Blackstone buys Busan-based actuator maker Futronic SEOUL, July 20 (AJP) -Blackstone has bought a majority stake in South Korean actuator and motion-control technology company Futronic in a deal that values the Busan-based company at about 1 trillion won ($720 million), according to multiple local media outlets. The two companies are yet to announce the deal or disclose the financial terms. The investment is being made in partnership with Futronic founder and Chairman Ko Jin-ho, who will remain chairman and chief executive officer to lead the company's next phase of global expansion alongside Blackstone. Founded in 1993, Futronic has grown into a key supplier of actuators and motion-control systems for the global automotive industry, working with leading original equipment manufacturers from the early engineering and development stages. The company has broadened its business beyond traditional automotive applications into next-generation mobility, including humanoid and general-purpose robotics, reflecting rising demand for precision motion-control technologies.Futronic operates primarily from South Korea and the United States while continuing to expand its global manufacturing and customer base. Its client roster includes major global automakers such as General Motors, Ford, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Nissan and Hyundai Motor, as well as several leading Chinese vehicle manufacturers. The company employed 216 people as of April 2026. 2026-07-20 13:36:56
Nvidia unveils Jetson Thor modules to broaden robotics, edge AI reach SEOUL, July 20 (AJP) - Nvidia has unveiled two new modules, the T3000 and T2000, built on its Jetson Thor architecture, in a bid to accelerate the large-scale deployment of robotics and edge artificial intelligence applications aimed at the mass market. The launch responds to rising demand for compact, power-efficient AI supercomputers capable of running foundation models directly at the edge, as general-purpose robots and autonomous machines move out of research labs and into commercial use across industries. The Jetson T3000 delivers 865 FP4 teraflops of AI computing performance in a form factor about half the size and power consumption of the higher-end T5000, pairing an Nvidia Blackwell GPU with an eight-core Neoverse Arm CPU and 32GB of memory. Nvidia said the module offers inference performance comparable to the T5000 on multimodal workloads while helping developers cut costs amid elevated memory prices. The T2000, offering 400 FP4 teraflops and 16GB of memory, extends the Thor architecture to a wider range of systems, serving as an entry point for developers building visual AI agents, autonomous mobile robots and industrial manipulators. Leading firms including 1X, Amazon Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Fanuc and Hitachi are already building systems on the Jetson AGX Thor platform, according to the company. Nvidia said newly released Jetson agent skills allow developers to automate memory optimization, achieving in days savings that once took weeks, with early adopters such as Ubtech and Connect Tech trimming memory use by as much as 15GB. The company also added Cosmos 3 Edge, a four-billion-parameter world foundation model, to its Thor lineup, enabling embodied systems to perceive their surroundings and predict actions in real time through on-device inference. 2026-07-20 10:38:40
Samsung Biologics to buy PolyPeptide in record $2 billion deal SEOUL, July 20 (AJP) - Samsung Biologics announced it has agreed to acquire Switzerland's PolyPeptide Group, a specialist maker of peptide drugs, for about 2.7 trillion won ($1.81 billion), the biggest merger-and-acquisition deal in South Korea's pharmaceutical and biotech industry. The agreement, disclosed in a regulatory filing on Monday, marks the Korean contract manufacturer's formal entry into peptides, the chemical backbone of the fast-growing class of obesity and diabetes treatments that has reshaped global drug markets. Its share fell 1.86 percent to 1,370,000 won as of 10:15 a.m. in Seoul on concerns over the fundraising. Samsung Biologics said it aims to secure a 100 percent stake in PolyPeptide through the purchase of a controlling holding and a subsequent tender offer, with the transaction expected to close by the end of December. The move pushes the company beyond its core in antibody therapies, mRNA and antibody-drug conjugates into a field it has long signaled it would enter, adding manufacturing sites, technology and skilled staff in a single stroke. Spun off from Ferring's peptide unit in 1996 and based in Baar, PolyPeptide runs six production and research sites across five countries in Europe, the United States and India, employing about 1,500 workers and carrying a track record of more than 1,000 peptide programs. "This acquisition reinforces our long-term growth strategy by not only broadening our service portfolio with modality expansion into peptides including GLP-1, but by also boosting our geographic reach and proximity further within the US, Europe, and India," Chief Executive John Rim said, adding the deal would lift both corporate and shareholder value. Samsung Biologics will inherit PolyPeptide's existing contracts, allowing it to sustain order volumes from the moment the deal closes, while weighing further capacity expansion as peptide demand climbs. "After a comprehensive review of strategic options, the Board is convinced that Samsung Biologics’ offer is compelling for our shareholders, delivering an attractive cash price and immediate, certain value today," PolyPeptide Chairman Peter Wilden said. 2026-07-20 08:52:15
TSMC lifts forecasts as AI demand cools peak fears SEOUL, July 17 (AJP) - TSMC reported record second-quarter earnings and raised its annual revenue and capital spending forecasts, signaling confidence that artificial intelligence demand will keep powering the chip industry and tempering fears that the AI boom is nearing a peak. The world's largest contract chipmaker said Thursday that net profit for the April to June quarter jumped 77.4 percent from a year earlier to NT$706.56 billion ($22 billion), comfortably beating the NT$632.6 billion mean estimate of analysts polled by LSEG and marking a fifth straight record quarter. Revenue climbed 36.0 percent to NT$1.27 trillion, while operating profit rose 65.4 percent to NT$766.6 billion. The operating margin widened 10.7 percentage points to 60.3 percent, crossing the 60 percent threshold for the first time as high-performance computing sales, which include AI chips, surged 20 percent from the previous quarter. Guidance impressed investors more than the results themselves. TSMC projected third-quarter revenue of $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion, above market expectations, and raised its full-year dollar revenue growth forecast to slightly above 40 percent from a prior view of more than 30 percent, betting that resilient AI demand will offset softening smartphone and other consumer sales. The Taiwanese firm also lifted planned 2026 capital spending to between $60 billion and $64 billion, from $52 billion to $56 billion, earmarking 70 percent to 80 percent for advanced nodes and the rest for cutting-edge packaging and testing. The expansion targets capacity that will come on stream from the second half of 2027, underscoring longer-term confidence. To meet that demand, TSMC will pour an additional $100 billion into its operations in Arizona. The upbeat outlook did little to steady South Korean chip shares on Thursday, however, as Samsung Electronics tumbled 8.77 percent to 255,000 won and SK Hynix slid 11.53 percent to 1.842 million won, dragged down by an overnight sell-off in U.S. memory names amid worries over rising Chinese supply and cooling data-center spending. 2026-07-17 15:18:39
Chey urges patience on SK hynix as AI demand set to surge SEOUL, July 17 (AJP) - Chey Tae-won, chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), said that investors in SK hynix would be wiser to hold their shares than to trade them, arguing that memory chips remain indispensable to the artificial intelligence boom. "I don't know where the stock will be next month either, but the best way to preserve your wealth is to sit tight rather than buy and sell," Chey said Friday during an AI dialogue at the KCCI summer forum on the resort island of Jeju. The remarks came a day after the benchmark KOSPI tumbled 6.37 percent to close at 6,820.60, slipping back below the 7,000 mark, as SK hynix plunged 11.5 percent amid a broad selloff in semiconductor shares triggered by the Bank of Korea's first rate hike in three and a half years. Chey brushed aside the volatility, likening AI to a four-year-old child that would inevitably lean on memory as it matured. Demand, he said, was bound to climb at an exponential pace, a dynamic he credited for the tenfold surge in chip valuations. Turning to strategy, the chairman cast the AI race as a matter of national security rather than mere industry, describing a widening rift between an American push for quality and a Chinese drive for price. South Korea, he warned, could hope to beat neither on those terms alone. Instead, Chey urged Seoul to carve out a niche by laying its own infrastructure and building applications atop it, courting the neutral nations caught between the two superpowers. The country should sell computing capacity and large language models, he said, not memory chips alone. "In the future, we must shift our strategy toward exporting intelligence rather than products," Chey said, adding that Korea's edge would lie in offering something safer, or otherwise distinct, than what Washington or Beijing could provide. 2026-07-17 12:53:52
US caps foreign student visas at four years in sweeping overhaul SEOUL, July 17 (AJP) - The United States will limit foreign students, exchange visitors and journalists to fixed periods of stay under a sweeping rule finalized by the Department of Homeland Security, ending a decades-old system that let them remain as long as they kept up their studies or work. Under the rule, students on F visas and exchange visitors on J visas will be admitted for the length of their program, up to a maximum of four years, after which they must apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for an extension of stay involving biometric vetting, background checks and fraud screening. The measure was published in the Federal Register on Thursday (local time) and takes effect 60 days later, in mid-September, meaning students arriving for the autumn term will fall under the new framework almost immediately. DHS said a sharp rise in visa holders had strained its capacity to monitor them. Foreign journalists on I visas will be admitted for 240 days, with extensions granted in further 240-day increments, while Chinese nationals face a tighter 90-day limit. The rule also halves the post-graduation grace period for F-1 students to 30 days and curbs their ability to switch academic programs. "For nearly half a century, the outdated 'duration of status' system has compromised national security and created an environment ripe for immigration fraud," said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, adding that the change would strengthen oversight and curb abuse. The impact on South Koreans is unavoidable, as most master's and doctoral programs run beyond four years, leaving extension approvals to determine whether students can finish their degrees. According to the Korean Embassy in Washington, 11,861 Koreans held F-1 student visas in 2025, alongside 349 I-visa holders and 7,985 J-1 exchange visitors. Experts called it the most consequential shift to the student visa regime in decades, raising the bar for those lawfully in the country and forcing applicants worldwide to weigh extension procedures and their attendant risks when mapping out their studies. 2026-07-17 10:55:55
Lee names Dec. 3 'National Sovereignty Day' SEOUL, July 17 (AJP) - President Lee Jae Myung said he would designate every Dec. 3 as "National Sovereignty Day," vowing to preserve the spirit of the mass protests that turned back an attempted power grab so that it endures for generations to come. The date marks the night in 2024 when lawmakers rushed to parliament to overturn a short-lived martial law declaration, an episode Lee's supporters have cast as a peaceful democratic uprising they call the "Revolution of Light." "The National Sovereignty Government will remember and carry forward this great history without fail," Lee wrote in a post on his Facebook account, published on Constitution Day, Friday. Lee said his administration would systematically gather and preserve records of the revolution so that "K-democracy" could spread as a global model, adding that a presidential Committee of Light had been launched on Monday to steer the effort. The president invoked the founding charter promulgated on the same date in 1948, saying its declaration that sovereignty rests with the people had served for 78 years as the compass guiding the democratic republic. He extended thanks to citizens who, he said, had braved the depths of winter to defend the country's democracy. The presidential office was to host an evening reception for invited citizens to mark the committee's launch, where Lee and guests were to watch "Ran 12·3," a documentary by director Lee Myung-se chronicling the events surrounding the martial law crisis. The committee, first established in March, is tasked with collecting historical materials, designating a commemoration day and installing monuments, though the plan to make Dec. 3 a public holiday still requires legislation to advance through the National Assembly. 2026-07-17 10:01:32
North Korea condemns 'warmonger' South over RIMPAC role SEOUL, July 17 (AJP) - North Korea denounced South Korea's leading role in the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific naval exercise, branding Seoul a "puppet warmonger" and warning of "proportional" countermeasures against the drill's participants. In a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Friday, Pyongyang cast the biennial exercise as a rehearsal for war that was dragging the Pacific into dangerous turbulence, and said regional states had an inviolable right to bolster their own war deterrence in response. KCNA said the "reckless racket" of what it called international ruffians would inevitably invite a chain of proportional responses from countries seeking to firmly rein it in. It heaped scorn on the United States, South Korea and Japan alike, likening the drill to outsiders lighting a fire at a neighbor's doorstep. The commentary is notable for reviving the epithet "puppet," a term North Korean media had not aimed at the current South Korean government in about one year and three months, since an April 2024 incident involving a South Korean air force fighter jet. North Korea took particular aim at Seoul's expanded footprint, asserting that South Korea had joined "as a main force." The South Korean Navy, a RIMPAC participant since 1990, this year commanded the exercise's combined maritime component for the first time, overseeing the operations of a multinational fleet. Pyongyang also seized on the exercise's embrace of new technology, noting that artificial intelligence had been introduced and that the integrated operation of manned and unmanned weapons systems had been made a core training focus. "The Pacific has now turned into a battlefield thick with the smell of gunpowder, regardless of its name," KCNA said, warning that undesirable developments could soon unfold on the Korean peninsula. RIMPAC 2026, which the U.S. Navy says draws 30 nations, began June 24 and runs through July 31 in and around Hawaii, led by the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. 2026-07-17 09:14:11
CJ, Sajo raise food prices as post-election domino looms SEOUL, July 16 (AJP) - Two of South Korea's major food makers, CJ CheilJedang and Sajo Group, will raise prices on staple grocery items in the coming weeks, stoking fears of a fresh round of domino increases across an industry already straining under higher costs. CJ CheilJedang will lift prices on 27 products — including its flagship Hetbahn instant rice, dumplings and grilled fish — by an average of 8 percent at hypermarkets from July 30, with convenience stores following on Aug. 1. Increases range from 4 percent to 12 percent, with Hetbahn rising the most at 12 percent. The company attributed the move to persistent cost pressure from higher prices for raw materials and naphtha-based packaging. It excluded convenience-store staples favored by younger shoppers, such as Hetbahn Cupbahn and desserts, and pledged sweeping summer discounts from next month to ease the burden on consumers. Sajo Group will follow on Aug. 3, raising factory prices on canned goods, fermented pastes and cooking oils after concluding talks with hypermarket chains. Canned mackerel and saury will jump 20 percent and canned tuna 10 percent, while red-pepper paste, soybean paste and sesame and perilla oils will each climb 12 percent. Sajo had already raised prices on fish cakes and imitation crab by 6 to 7 percent on July 2. The two firms join a lengthening queue. Ottogi raised factory prices on 29 items from July 16, led by a 17 percent increase for pepper products, while Lotte Chilsung Beverage lifted prices on 44 products by an average of 5.3 percent from June 26 — its first adjustment in about two years. The wave has gathered pace since the June 3 local elections, as companies that had held back under the government's informal pressure to contain prices moved swiftly once the vote was over. The government expects further gains in food and dining prices in the second half, citing a stubbornly weak won, rising imported raw-material costs and mounting labor and logistics expenses — leaving households braced for a heavier grocery bill in the months ahead. 2026-07-16 15:19:56
Seoul aims for AI's top two, plans nationwide model this year SEOUL, July 16 (AJP) - South Korea's technology chief announced the country would push to break into the world's top two artificial-intelligence powers, buoyed by an international assessment ranking it third, and vowed to build a frontier model rivalling those Washington now guards as strategic weapons. Bae Kyung-hoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, told a presidential briefing on Thursday at the Cheong Wa Dae that a second round of model evaluations due in August could vault the country beyond its current third-place standing. A third assessment is scheduled for December, he added. Pressed by a citizens' panel on whether Korea could match the frontier-class models the United States has moved to restrict, Bae was emphatic. "I dare say the Republic of Korea can build one too," he said, arguing that the country could reach the highest tier of performance if its computing infrastructure were adequately backed. The bottleneck, he stressed, is hardware. Bae said about 10,000 graphics processing units would be enough to compete at that level, but noted that developers of sovereign foundation models had been receiving only 500 B200-class GPUs each, a figure that has since risen to about 735 — still far short of what the race demands. President Lee Jae Myung threw his weight behind the appeal, comparing years of under-investment to fighting rivals armed with electronic calculators while Korea made do with counting rods. Bae said additional budget for frontier-grade development would hinge on active support from fiscal authorities. The minister also pledged to release a security-specialized sovereign model within the year, training existing domestic models on additional security data to shore up self-reliance against an uncertain environment in which US access controls could tighten again at any moment. On physical AI, Bae said the government would develop a general-purpose model while building sector-specific variants in parallel, aiming within three years for a framework that can be deployed on site with as little as 100 to 1,000 hours of data. Localizing data, models and components, he said, would lay the groundwork for exporting the technology abroad. Bae unveiled plans for a nationwide service, "AI for All," to launch this year, expanding public AI agents and advancing toward one AI agent per citizen from 2027. Lee said strong multilingual support could draw middle-income nations into a cooperative bloc, and Bae cast the effort as the basis for a horizontal AI network free of dependence on the US-China duopoly. Under its "K-Moonshot" project, the ministry will begin work on a quantum computer by 2029, a cancer-focused AI bio model by 2028 and brain-computer interface technology by 2030, while a new "asset-ising failure" scheme, effective this month, will keep funding promising research even when it misses its targets. 2026-07-16 14:26:24