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

WNMC 26: AI reshapes how news is experienced, not just made, media leaders say in Marseille MARSEILLE, June 03 (AJP) - Artificial intelligence is no longer merely changing how journalism is produced but is rewiring how audiences encounter the news itself, a panel of global media leaders said at the World News Media Congress. South Korea's AJP, an AI-native news agency built for that shift, took its place alongside publishers from India and Germany to argue that the technology is dissolving the old path of search, click and read, replacing it with content that anticipates what readers want before they ask. The session, titled "How AI Is Transforming the News Experience," was moderated by Dmitry Shishkin, a former BBC World Service digital editor and now an independent media adviser, whose long-championed "user needs" model framed much of the discussion. The 77th congress, organized by the World Association of News Publishers and held at the Palais du Pharo from June 1 to 3, drew about 1,000 participants from more than 60 countries, representing over 450 news publishers. Seo Hye-seung, managing editor of AJP and part of the Aju Media Group, opened with a personal story about her 83-year-old mother, who now relies on her smartphone to take her medication and book restaurants. "This is the most ordinary thing that's happening in Korea," Seo said, noting that the country had absorbed broadband, smartphones and now AI faster than almost anywhere. She cited a study finding that more than half of office work in Korea passes through an AI tool at some point each day. Because AJP entered the crowded English-language agency market late, Seo said, it was built to its advantage. "We were built AI-native from the first line of code," she said, adding that reporters with less than two years of experience now produce 5,000-word features and analyses. The group publishes in five languages, she said, filtering selected stories from its Korean flagship through a system called AI Pick that translates them automatically. The automation lifted output in four additional languages tenfold and raised English traffic by about 30%, according to the company. Seo said the shift had freed journalists to seek out audiences rather than wait for them, pointing to the group's saturation coverage of a BTS concert in central Seoul earlier this year. "The new question is who offers the best experience," she said, "because users know best." Sannuta Raghu, executive producer and head of the AI lab at India's Scroll.in, said AI was becoming core infrastructure for what she called "personal, machine-mediated sense-making." Her newsroom, she said, employs about 20 people in a country of 1.4 billion. Five years ago it abandoned the chase for breaking news to focus on context and depth, finding its paying readers among academics and researchers studying South Asia. Rather than compete with chatbots that aggregate answers from many sources, Raghu said, Scroll.in was turning its platform into a "trusted workspace" offering what she termed auditable comprehensiveness. "We are very open about the comprehensiveness gap," she said, describing a system that maps what the newsroom can cover and transparently fills the rest from verified sources such as datasets and government bodies. Markus Knall, chief editor and director of content at Germany's Ippen Digital, struck an optimistic note for community journalism. "This may be the best time for local publishers in the last few years, and AI is the reason," Knall said. He argued that small audiences and high costs, once crippling constraints, had become the sector's biggest opportunity. Ippen runs about 170 local news websites in Germany, he said. On a recent election night, the group published more than 4,000 articles covering some 20,000 communities, output he said no human staff could ever match. But Knall warned against treating AI purely as an efficiency tool, urging newsrooms to chase genuine new scale while reserving human reporters for the trust that underpins democratic life. Astrid Maier, chief deputy editor and head of strategy at German news agency dpa, said the industry was facing not an efficiency story but a wholesale platform shift. "If there weren't any independent news agencies right now in the age of AI, they should be invented right now," Maier said, arguing that verified, fact-committed information was more vital than ever as machines learn to read the structured data inside each news article. She presented DPA-IQ, a trusted information layer launched as a minimum viable product two weeks ago, which lets clients' AI agents pull verified text, images and soon video on demand rather than receiving a constant push down the wire. Maier cautioned that if publishers did not set shared standards for how facts are attributed within such systems, the large technology platforms would set them instead. "Otherwise facts won't matter anymore," she said. The discussion echoed a session a day earlier on the evolution from search optimization toward answer- and generative-engine optimization, where panelists stressed that audiences increasingly meet the news through AI rather than the open web. Across both sessions the underlying message was consistent: while algorithms and platforms keep shifting, the direct relationship between a publisher and its readers remains the enduring source of value. 2026-06-03 18:09:06
[[WNMC 2026]] AJP Director Seo Hye-seung: 'AI Native News Agency is the Answer' – Korean Model Unveiled in Marseille Seo Hye-seung, the editor-in-chief of Aju Media Group (AJP), participated as a panelist in the session titled "How AI Is Transforming the News Experience" at the 77th World News Media Congress (WNMC) held on June 3 in Marseille, France. The session was moderated by Dmitry Shishkin, a former BBC World Service journalist, and featured media leaders from Germany's Ippen Digital, dpa, and India's Scroll.in. During the discussion, Seo highlighted AJP's strength as a latecomer in the English news agency market, emphasizing that it was designed from the ground up with AI in mind. She explained that Aju Economy produces around 300 articles daily, some of which are selected by their in-house system, 'AI Pick,' for automatic distribution in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and English. This automation has resulted in a tenfold increase in publication volume for those languages and a 30% rise in English traffic. Seo defined AJP's identity as conveying "Asian substance in English," noting that while language has traditionally been tied to regions, the advent of AI is reversing that trend. "AI is changing not only how news is created but also how readers experience it," she emphasized, stating that readers are the best judges of this transformation. Aju Media Group operates as a multilingual, AI-native media organization, centered around its Korean-language Aju Economy, the English news agency AJP, and the AI Business Channel (ABC), offering international editions in five languages. 2026-06-03 16:18:00
[[WNMC 2026]] How AI is Transforming News Consumption Artificial intelligence is not only changing how news is produced but also how readers experience it. The era of searching for keywords and clicking links is fading, giving way to a time when content is delivered based on predictions of what readers want, even before they ask. On June 3, during the 77th World News Media Congress held at the Palais du Pharo in Marseille, discussions took place in a session titled "How AI Is Transforming the News Experience." The congress, which ran from June 1 to 3, attracted around 1,000 participants representing over 450 media organizations from more than 60 countries. The session was moderated by Dmitry Shishkin, a former digital development editor at BBC World Service and now an independent media consultant. Panelists included Markus Knall, Chief Content Officer and Editor-in-Chief at Ippen Digital in Germany; Astrid Maier, Deputy Editor and Strategy Head at dpa in Germany; Sannuta Raghu, Executive Producer at Scroll.in in India; and Seo Hye-seung, Editor-in-Chief of AJP at Ajou Media Group in South Korea. The central theme of the session was "liquid content," which refers to the concept that a single piece of reporting can change its form based on the context of the reader, reaching them in the appropriate format at the right moment. This contrasts sharply with the traditional model that waits for readers to visit the media outlet. Shishkin's "user needs" model provided the theoretical foundation for this discussion. It starts from the premise that readers do not consume news solely for information. Instead, it categorizes their different intents into four areas: "to know," "to understand," "to feel," and "to do." He emphasized, "Tell the story you want to tell, but frame it from the perspective that adds value for the reader." AI takes this model a step further by analyzing data to determine which readers currently seek understanding or emotional resonance, automatically generating content in the appropriate form. The session also posed the fundamental question: What does it mean to be a news agency in the age of AI? Traditionally, news agencies have acted as wholesalers, producing articles to supply to other media. However, as AI automates translation, curation, and distribution, the boundaries of what agencies can deliver are expanding. In this context, Seo Hye-seung's AJP model stands out. Ajou Media Group publishes content in five languages, including Korean, English, and Chinese, as well as Japanese and Vietnamese editions, all driven by AI. Seo identifies AJP's identity not in the search era but in the AI era. He stated, "In the search era, language was tied to regions, but in the AI era, that formula is flipped. All major language models are fundamentally built around English, and Asia is increasingly described by AI trained on Western data. We have found our role as an Asian English news agency, writing in the language that AI can best understand. This is the 'Asian substance in English.'" Seo explained the paradox of being a latecomer designed as an AI-native. Although AJP is a newcomer in the English news agency market, its foundation built on AI from the start has offset the disadvantages of being late to the game. He shared that the 72-year-old founder of Ajou Media Group, Kwak Young-gil, adopted the principles "AI or Die" and "Start now, perfect later" after attending AI lectures at KAIST during the pandemic. Seo emphasized that while AI serves as an auxiliary tool, the role of journalists has become even more crucial. He said, "Our motto is clear: to become journalists that AI can learn from and keep up with. Currently, at AJP, reporters with less than two years of experience are producing in-depth features, interviews, and analytical articles of 5,000 words." In practice, AJP selects a portion of the approximately 300 articles produced daily by Ajou Economic Daily through a system called "AI Pick" for automatic distribution in four additional languages. This automation has increased the publication volume in those four languages tenfold, and English traffic has reportedly risen by 30%. This session naturally connected with the previous day's discussion on "Discovery: How to Rethink Search in the AI Era." While the June 2 session addressed the evolution of search strategies from SEO to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), the June 3 session looked ahead to a stage where readers experience news even before searching for it. This shift suggests that the long-standing questions in the media industry are changing. Where publishers once asked, "What is the best journalism?" the new question is, "What is the best experience?" However, both sessions emphasized a common message: the fundamentals remain more important than technology. Algorithms and platforms may constantly change, but the direct relationship with readers endures. The third key point was how AI is rapidly expanding the reporting scope of local publishers. Sannuta Raghu from Scroll.in in India has led experiments using AI to cover broader communities with limited resources, demonstrating the significant benefits of automation for resource-constrained local media. AJP shares a similar discovery. A small AI video and essay contest conducted last year in collaboration with the Indian Embassy in South Korea started with a mere $220 marketing budget but garnered about one million impressions, laying the groundwork for building India-focused content. Seo illustrated how the time freed up by AI translates into enhanced reader experiences by referencing the recent BTS concert in Gwanghwamun, which was live-streamed 24/7 for two months, transforming into a platform for the global fanbase 'ARMY' in five languages. He stated, "We cannot wait for readers to come to us. We must seek them out and understand what they want to experience." Ultimately, the session converged on a single conclusion: while AI is shaking up the production, distribution, and consumption of news, the reader remains at the center. Technology is merely a tool, and the goal of 'predictive journalism' is to create content that finds its audience. The panelists, including Seo, shared a vision that regardless of where readers are or what format they desire, stories will be delivered at the right moment, emphasizing that the competitive edge for media in the AI era lies in creating reasons for readers to return. 2026-06-03 16:09:00
WNMC 26: No map in AI age. Newsrooms must chart their own course MARSEILLE, June 03 (AJP) - If there was one message that echoed through the halls on the second day of the World News Media Congress on Tuesday, it was that nobody knows exactly where artificial intelligence is taking journalism. "There is no map," WAN-IFRA AI in Media Lead Ezra Eeman told editors, publishers and newsroom leaders gathered in Marseille. For an industry accustomed to navigating disruption, the statement was both unsettling and liberating. The internet had a roadmap. Mobile had a roadmap. Social media eventually had a roadmap. But artificial intelligence is creating a fundamentally different environment—one in which technology increasingly mediates the relationship between publishers and audiences, while the rules of value creation, distribution and discovery are being rewritten in real time. "That is not how the new world works. The map does not fully explain what's happening now," Eeman said. The challenge facing publishers, he argued, is not simply adopting AI tools. It is learning how journalism survives and thrives when AI becomes the primary interface through which people access information. Charting a Course Without a Map Rather than offering a blueprint, Eeman outlined the choices publishers are already making as they attempt to navigate the uncertainty. Some are taking a defensive approach. According to data he shared, 56 percent of publishers have blocked AI bots from accessing their content. Others are pursuing engagement. Another 31 percent are actively negotiating or striking licensing agreements with AI companies. Neither approach is universally right, Eeman suggested. "It depends on your setup and size." The larger point is that publishers must make deliberate choices about how they participate in the emerging AI ecosystem. Because in a world where AI systems increasingly summarize, interpret and distribute information, ownership and control matter more than ever. "Without control, no market. No ability to capture value," Eeman warned. For decades, publishers competed for audience attention. Today they are also competing for their place within AI systems that may become the dominant gateway to information. From Ingredient to Destination Eeman argued that one of the greatest dangers facing publishers is becoming accessory. The challenge is not to fall into an ingredient, but survive as the destination. As AI systems generate answers, summaries and recommendations, journalism risks being reduced to an ingredient inside someone else's product. If publishers merely supply content to AI systems, they risk losing audience relationships, subscription opportunities and revenue streams. If they create distinctive experiences, services and products that users actively seek out, they remain relevant regardless of how information is distributed. The future, Eeman argued, will favor organizations that understand emerging AI behaviors and adapt accordingly. "Understand AI habits, avoid commodity, master scarcity, grow your own intelligence, serve the agents." The message reflected a growing consensus that abundance makes uniqueness more valuable. "Market favors exclusive, specific and authenticity." In a world flooded with AI-generated content, original reporting, trusted brands, expertise and human judgment become strategic advantages. Learning While Moving What made the discussion notable was that no speaker claimed to have solved the problem. Instead, leaders from some of the world's largest news organizations described their own efforts to navigate uncertainty. Fabrice Bakhouche, chief executive of SIPA Ouest-France Group, acknowledged that publishers are still trying to understand what AI will mean for their organizations. "The impact on roles, processes and management is only beginning to emerge," he said. "There is no clear picture on impact." His response has been to encourage experimentation while avoiding paralysis. "Bottom-up approaches are relevant," he said, cautioning against becoming "too conservative." Rather than waiting for certainty, organizations must learn through action. Building the Aircraft While Flying At British 24-hour broadcaster Sky News, the challenge is equally complex. Managing Director Jonathan Levy described an industry facing "constant, simultaneous and accelerating" disruption. Quoting former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron, Levy called this period "head-spinning change in media consumption." Sky's answer has been to embrace innovation while maintaining its core journalistic mission. "We must deliver trusted journalism and simultaneously build the aircraft while in flight," Levy said. The organization is pursuing a premium, video-first future while continuing to cover breaking news around the clock. For Levy, successful navigation depends on leadership that acknowledges uncertainty rather than pretending certainty exists. "Honesty, leadership in transition, not pretending to have answers." The objective is not to eliminate uncertainty but to create enough confidence for organizations to move forward. Building the Scaffolding At Reuters, AI strategy leader Jane Barrett described a different approach to charting a course. Rather than focusing primarily on technology, Reuters has concentrated on building structures that allow experimentation without sacrificing trust. She outlined three layers of what she called "scaffolding." The first is editorial: governance committees, updated guidelines and clear rules governing AI use. The second is technological: approved tools, data security protections and content safeguards. The third is psychological: creating a culture where experimentation is encouraged and failure is accepted as part of learning. "Failure is learning," Barrett said. Her observation that "10 percent is about AI, 20 percent about technology, 70 percent about people and processes" captured a theme repeated throughout the day. The challenge is not simply deploying AI. It is helping organizations adapt to a new reality. Following Signals, Sharing Failures Perhaps the most revealing part of Eeman's presentation was his acknowledgment that the industry remains in the early stages of transformation. "No publisher has a map," he said. Instead, organizations are navigating through experimentation, observation and collaboration. The goal is not to discover a single correct route but to learn from one another's successes and mistakes. "Sharing signals, failures." 2026-06-03 09:58:25
Korea sees 80% of summer crude secured as Mideast war strains supply SEOUL, June 02 (AJP) - South Korea expects to secure most of the crude oil it needs for August by next month, the energy minister said, seeking to quell fears of a supply crunch as the Middle East war drags into its fourth month. Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan told a cabinet meeting chaired by President Lee Jae Myung that projected August crude volumes were climbing steadily and would reach the mid-80 percent range of normal levels during July, the 95th day of the conflict. From May to July, the country secured 86 percent of its usual crude and 83 percent of its naphtha, holding a stable course, the minister said. Naphtha plant utilization stood at about 75 percent as of late May, close to the prewar level of 80 percent. "We have already secured replacement volumes to last through the end of this year," Kim said of natural gas supplies, after Qatar's recent declaration of force majeure on liquefied natural gas shipments stirred concern. The government turned to the United States and Southeast Asia to plug the gap. Markets had feared an August squeeze should the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokehold on Korea's Middle East crude, persist into the peak summer demand season. The International Energy Agency had also warned that supply disruptions and seasonal demand could push the oil market into a danger zone in July and August. With no clear date for safe passage through the strait, the ministry extended its strategic stockpile swap scheme through this month from an earlier April-to-May window. Under the scheme, the government lends out reserve crude once a refiner proves it has sourced oil abroad, then recoups the barrels when replacement cargoes arrive. About 21 million barrels have been swapped and are now being repaid in stages. Supplies of medical materials such as intravenous-fluid packaging, syringes and surgical gloves remained at normal levels, the ministry said, while helium, hydrogen bromide and aluminum wheels feeding the semiconductor, auto and shipbuilding industries showed no signs of disruption. 2026-06-02 16:10:59
Samsung Heavy wins $2.8 billion FLNG order in North America SEOUL, June 02 (AJP) - Samsung Heavy Industries announced it has won an order to build one floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) production unit for a North American client, in a deal worth 4.33 trillion won ($2.85 billion). The South Korean shipbuilder said Tuesday through regulatory filings that construction will begin once the client issues a notice to proceed, with delivery scheduled for July 2030. It did not name the buyer. FLNG units are vast offshore vessels that extract, chill and store natural gas at sea, freeing producers from the cost and delay of building pipelines and onshore export terminals to reach remote gas fields. Demand has firmed as buyers in Asia and Europe hunt for supply to bridge the shift away from coal. Samsung Heavy is a dominant player in the niche, having built Royal Dutch Shell's Prelude, the world's largest FLNG facility. The company said it has secured seven of the 11 FLNG units ordered worldwide to date, giving it a 64 percent share of the global market. The contract lifts Samsung Heavy's order tally this year to 28 vessels worth $8.3 billion, or about 60 percent of its $13.9 billion annual target, the company said. Its commercial vessel arm has booked $5.0 billion, 88 percent of target, on the back of 13 LNG carriers, two very large ethane carriers, four very large gas carriers, two container ships and six crude tankers. The offshore division, including the latest FLNG award, has won $3.3 billion in orders, or 40 percent of its $8.2 billion goal for the year. Shares of Samsung Heavy Industries traded at 27,800 per stock at 3:08 p.m., 0.91 percent higher than the day before. 2026-06-02 15:11:06
Naver Cloud, Nvidia expand alliance to build global AI factories SEOUL, June 02 (AJP) - Naver Cloud is teaming up with Nvidia to build artificial intelligence factories around the world, deepening a relationship that until now centered largely on the supply of graphics processing units. The South Korean cloud unit said on Tuesday it would broaden the partnership into a strategic technology alliance spanning AI infrastructure, models, services and physical AI, moving well beyond a conventional buyer-supplier arrangement. Naver Cloud Chief Executive Kim Yu-won outlined the plan at Nvidia's cloud partner summit in Taiwan, where he positioned the company as a full-stack player covering everything from infrastructure to applications. "Our partnership with Nvidia goes beyond a simple GPU supplier-and-customer relationship," Kim said. "It is a strategic decision to develop AI technology together and expand the global AI ecosystem." Under the deal, Naver Cloud will draw on Nvidia's open Nemotron 3 large language model to sharpen its own HyperCLOVA X model, while the two firms jointly research model optimization and core technologies. They also plan to help governments and local companies build sovereign AI models tailored to individual markets. The tie-up surfaces ahead of a meeting in South Korea between senior Naver and Nvidia executives, at which the companies are expected to disclose a concrete execution plan for the AI factory venture. Raj Mirpuri, vice president for Nvidia's global AI cloud and infrastructure, said the collaboration would let customers across Asia and beyond tap the chipmaker's integrated platform to build sovereign, industrial and enterprise AI. 2026-06-02 11:03:36
WNMC 26: AI dominates day one as annual World News Media Congress opens in Marseille SEOUL, June 1 (AJP) - The annual gathering of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) opened at the Palais du Pharo in Marseille, southern France, with artificial intelligence (AI) shaping every major session on the first day of the three-day event. About 1,000 publishers, editors and chief executives from more than 60 countries packed the venue at the global news media association's 77th congress on Monday. The program moved through pre-Congress Deep Dives, partner showcases, a press freedom prize ceremony and the formal Congress opening, capped by an evening welcome reception. The day's most urgent strand was the disruption of search. A Deep Dive titled "Discovery: How to Rethink Search in the AI Era" examined the impact of Google's AI Overviews, AI Mode and chatbot-driven discovery on publisher traffic and audience behavior. Recent announcements from Google I/O 2026 were also dissected. Speakers said publisher business models built on search were now in structural transition, not merely facing another search-engine optimization tweak. The crisis is backed by hard numbers. A Pew Research Center study tracked 68,879 searches by 900 US adults. When an AI Overview appeared, the click-through rate on regular search results dropped to 8 percent, half the 15 percent recorded without one. Clicks on the source links inside the AI summary itself ran at just 1 percent. Chartbeat data covering more than 2,500 global news sites also showed Google search referrals down 33 percent last year. In September, US media group Penske Media filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, arguing that AI Search has broken the reciprocal relationship between publishers and the search engine. Equally pressing is the wave of disinformation generated by AI itself. According to a European Parliamentary Research Service briefing, deepfake videos shared online surged from about 500,000 in 2023 to about 8 million in 2025 — a 16-fold rise. Europol estimates that up to 90 percent of online content could be synthetically generated by 2026. Running in parallel was a session on the emerging market for licensing news content to AI companies. "What Publishers Must Do to Take Advantage of the AI Content Market" walked publishers through bot management, content enhancement and monetization, drawing on WAN-IFRA's own market guidance. The association brought together vendors active in each area, framing the AI content market as both threat and opportunity for newsrooms trying to protect content and capture new revenue at the same time. The newsroom's own response took center stage in "AI: What the Latest Developments Mean for Publishers and Newsrooms", a 90-minute session that worked through technical developments, accelerator lessons, governance and practical tools. Florent Daudens, co-founder of Mizal AI and a former press lead at Hugging Face, opened the slot alongside OK Lab founder Christophe Israël with a survey of the latest AI technical developments. The session closed with a demonstration of Sourcebase.ai, the US AI investigations and reporting platform led by CEO Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Three back-to-back Partner Showcase sessions translated those themes into concrete tools. DeeperDive opened the slot, demonstrating a generative AI answer engine for the open web designed to convert trusted publisher content into personalized conversations and lift user retention. A subsequent session showcased how French newsrooms are deploying AI-driven semantic analysis combined with dynamic templates and auto-layout tools, with concrete return-on-investment data on both productivity and subscriber retention. Google closed the slot with a session on NotebookLM, led by Google News Initiative trainer Luisa Fernau. The tone then shifted with the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize ceremony, held in English. Awarded annually since 1992, the prize this year recognized 24 journalists and outlets across five categories. These were the Courage, Impact and Independence prizes, alongside the Mohamed Maïga Prize for African Investigative Journalism and the Lucas Dolega-SAIF Photo Prize. The international jury included Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub, Pakistani editor-in-chief Hamid Mir and Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression president Mazen Darwish, among others. Closing remarks came from Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission's Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Virkkunen oversees the bloc's AI policy and the enforcement of the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Her appearance pulled the morning's threads — search disruption, content licensing and platform power — onto regulatory ground. The Congress formally opened with welcome remarks from Ros Atkins, BBC News Analysis Editor and Presenter; Catherine Pégard, France's Minister of Culture; and Ladina Heimgartner, President of WAN-IFRA. The opening leaned into the symbolism of France's first WNMC host turn in about three decades, since Paris in 1995. The first Congress Keynote was titled "AI, Journalism and the Uncertain Future of the Public Square." It was delivered by The New York Times Chairman and Publisher A.G. Sulzberger. The substance of his remarks will be covered in a separate article. The "Plenary: In Conversation" that followed was hosted by Atkins and revisited the day's main threads in interview format. The Golden Pen of Freedom Awarding Ceremony then took the stage, preceded by a keynote from Mariya Gabriel, UNESCO Assistant Director-General. Established in 1961, the Golden Pen has on several occasions been credited with securing the release of imprisoned journalists, and remains WAN-IFRA's highest press freedom honor. The formal day-one program closed with a Welcome Reception at R2:Reverso, a venue overlooking Marseille's Old Port. The setting framed the first evening of informal networking against the Mediterranean. 2026-06-01 17:16:06
Korea, China ease food trade rules, opening wider door for K-food exports SEOUL, June 01 (AJP) - South Korea and China have agreed to streamline registration procedures for Korean food exporters and to permit shipments of meat-based instant noodles, widening the export channel for the country's increasingly popular K-food, Seoul's food safety regulator said. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said Monday it held its 16th Korea-China food safety cooperation meeting in Qingdao, China, and the 17th Korea-China Food Standards Expert Council in Jeju, both on May 28. Under the new arrangement, Korean firms seeking to ship food to China had previously been required to file registrations with Chinese authorities themselves, but the ministry will now handle bulk registration for all categories except livestock products. The change is expected to slash the registration period to about 10 days from roughly three months, the ministry said, with the revised rules likely to take effect in August. The National Food Safety Information Service plans to publish a report dissecting the detailed amendments to China's General Administration of Customs notice issued in March. The talks also cleared meat-based instant noodles for export, a category long barred from the Chinese market. Such products may now enter China provided they use meat from approved countries and undergo proper heat treatment. The agreement comes as K-food rides record momentum, with the country's food exports reaching $10.41 billion in 2025 and ramen alone topping $1.5 billion for the first time, up 21.9 percent on the year, the agriculture ministry said. Shipments to China, K-food's second-largest market, rose 5.1 percent to about $1.59 billion as spicy Korean varieties win shelf space. 2026-06-01 15:48:45
Kakao union sets June 10 partial strike as labor standoff sharpens SEOUL, June 01 (AJP) - Kakao's union announced it would stage a four-hour partial strike on June 10, escalating a deepening standoff with management over job security and the company's executive pay structure. The Kakao branch of the Korean Chemical, Textile & Food Workers’ Union laid out its demands and walkout schedule in a statement on Monday, marking the latest step toward the messaging giant's first-ever headquarters strike. The union said its core demand was to halt the sales, spin-offs and restructuring it blames on years of management missteps, and to secure stable employment. It also called for an overhaul of a pay system it said rewards executives lavishly even as their decisions fuel worker insecurity. "We are well aware of deep concern over possible disruptions or problems with KakaoTalk and other services so closely woven into daily life," the union said, adding it would hold the four-hour stoppage and a rally in Pangyo on Wednesday, June 10. The union signaled it could sharpen its action, saying it had opted for a limited walkout rather than an immediate all-out strike and would ratchet up pressure depending on the course of further talks. The move follows the collapse of a second mediation session at the Gyeonggi National Labor Relations Commission on May 27, which handed the union the legal right to strike. Industry officials see little chance of an extreme outage such as a KakaoTalk blackout even if the union escalates, noting that most platform systems are automated and that non-union and standby staff can keep maintenance and operations running. The standoff comes amid a swell of labor unrest across South Korea's tech and chip sectors, where workers are pressing for a bigger share of profits. Samsung Electronics' union has sought 15 percent of chip-division operating profit, while Hyundai Motor's union has demanded 30 percent of net profit in its 2026 wage talks. 2026-06-01 10:36:41