AJU PRESS ASIA FIRST NEWS AGENCY

Journalist

Kim Dong-young
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
  • Hyundai robot Atlas masters rabona kick
    Hyundai robot Atlas masters rabona kick SEOUL, May 29 (AJP) - Hyundai Motor Group has unveiled a marketing campaign showcasing the football skills of Atlas, the humanoid robot developed by its U.S. robotics unit Boston Dynamics, in a fresh demonstration of the company's push into physical artificial intelligence. As a partner of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, to be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, the automaker released a five-part "School of Football" series on its official YouTube channel, the company said Thursday. The films show Atlas dribbling, passing and shooting with apparent ease. In the clips, the robot pulls off a rabona — a flourish in which the kicking leg is wrapped behind the standing leg — and even lands a "ghost rabona," adding a feint to deceive a defender. To master the moves, Atlas modeled motion data from professional players and refined its technique through reinforcement learning. Hyundai said the campaign demonstrated its capabilities in AI-driven reinforcement learning, precise mimicry of human movement and hardware control. The launch film, three training videos, and its final reveal video released through Friday on the group’s YouTube channel drew a combined around 48,600 views in their first five days. "Through football, we have shown the world the future of robotics," said Jee Sung-won, head of Hyundai's brand marketing division, adding that the company plans to build varied brand experiences around mobility and robotics. The campaign comes as Hyundai Motor Group prepares to put Atlas to industrial work. The group has said it intends to deploy more than 25,000 of the robots across Hyundai and Kia plants, beginning with parts-sequencing tasks at its Metaplant America facility in Savannah, Georgia, from 2028, as part of a broader bet on humanoid automation. 2026-05-29 14:38:03
  • Celltrion begins primate trials for quad-target obesity drug
    Celltrion begins primate trials for quad-target obesity drug SEOUL, May 29 (AJP) - Celltrion has kicked off primate toxicity trials for its next-generation obesity drug candidate CT-G32, moving the compound into the final stretch of preclinical development ahead of a planned investigational new drug (IND) submission in the first half of 2026. CT-G32 simultaneously targets four biological pathways, including GLP-1, making it what Celltrion describes as a potential first-in-class therapy. The company said the drug is designed to address persistent shortcomings of existing GLP-1 treatments — including inter-patient variability in weight loss, muscle loss, and durability — while maximizing fat reduction. The ongoing toxicity study covers 252 rats and 48 monkeys to assess the compound's safety profile and establish appropriate clinical dosing ranges. Celltrion said it will also evaluate CT-G32's pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties alongside the toxicity assessments. In earlier preclinical work, CT-G32 demonstrated superior weight loss compared to a reference compound at equivalent doses, while preserving lean body mass — a key differentiator in a market increasingly focused on muscle retention during treatment. "CT-G32 is being developed as a next-generation drug that addresses the limitations of existing GLP-1-based therapies and extends beyond obesity to cover metabolic diseases," said a Celltrion spokesperson. The company is also developing an oral obesity drug in parallel, targeting an IND filing in the second half of 2028. 2026-05-29 09:56:51
  • FuriosaAI taps Broadcom to build third-generation AI inference chip
    FuriosaAI taps Broadcom to build third-generation AI inference chip SEOUL, May 28 (AJP) - South Korean artificial intelligence chip designer FuriosaAI said it had forged a strategic partnership with U.S. semiconductor giant Broadcom to co-develop a next-generation AI inference platform, deepening a homegrown bid to challenge the dominance of established players in the booming market for AI silicon. According to the neural processing unit maker on Thursday, the two companies will evolve FuriosaAI's proprietary tensor contraction processor architecture into a multi-die chiplet system, building an engine tuned for the high-volume token processing that global hyperscale data centers increasingly demand. The collaboration builds on FuriosaAI's second-generation accelerator, RNGD, a 180-watt PCIe chip now in mass production. Fabricated on TSMC's 5-nanometer process and paired with SK hynix HBM3 memory, the accelerator is optimized for large language models and agentic AI workloads, and has already been validated in production at customers including Samsung SDS and LG AI Research. The third-generation accelerator will carry a 2-nanometer compute die and HBM4/4E memory, drawing on Broadcom's advanced packaging to fuse multiple silicon dies into a single high-performance chip. The two firms plan to begin sampling the chip in the first half of 2028, as surging demand for agentic AI pushes inference workloads to outpace the training tasks that first fueled the generative AI boom. 2026-05-28 15:57:59
  • Kakao CEO apologizes to staff as union secures strike right after talks collapse
    Kakao CEO apologizes to staff as union secures strike right after talks collapse SEOUL, May 28 (AJP) - Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a offered a public apology to employees as the company's union secured the legal right to strike following the collapse of a second mediation session, raising the prospect of the tech giant's first-ever headquarters walkout. Chung issued the apology through an internal notice Thursday, saying she was "sincerely sorry" for failing to quickly dispel growing uncertainty within the company. "Negotiations have dragged on, and I take seriously the fact that our crew members have had to wait this long," she said, using Kakao's in-house term for employees. The CEO struck a conciliatory tone, stressing that labor and management ultimately share the same direction and must work through their differences through dialogue. She also hinted at a partial organizational reshuffle, saying the company needed to reestablish a stable operational framework and reset its service priorities. Mediation talks at the Gyeonggi National Labor Relations Commission broke down late Wednesday after running until 11 p.m., leaving both sides without an agreement. The failure hands the union the legal standing to launch strike action, with about 1,200 union members set to march through the Pangyo Station area on June 10. The union said in a statement that it would not entirely close the door on further dialogue, but added it could "no longer resolve the matter through waiting and patience alone," and would move ahead with preparations for a June strike. The union accused management of passive bargaining, unilaterally paying out bonuses mid-negotiation and repeatedly swapping its lead representatives — moves it said had eroded trust. The central dispute centers on whether Kakao's annual 5-million-won restricted stock unit grants should count as performance pay, a classification the union firmly rejects. Kakao said it would keep communication channels open with the union even after the mediation process concluded. Shares of Kakao traded at 38,700 won per stock on 1:22 p.m., 4.44 percent lower than a day before and roughly 37 percent lower than earlier this year. 2026-05-28 13:29:26
  • AJP DEEP INSIGHT: Hormuzs final tug-of-war — nuclear stakes, civilizational fault lines, and a new world order in the AI age
    AJP DEEP INSIGHT: Hormuz's final tug-of-war — nuclear stakes, civilizational fault lines, and a new world order in the AI age SEOUL, May 28 (AJP) - In late May 2026, the world is watching the Middle East once again with unflinching attention. Explosions continue to echo across the Strait of Hormuz. The United States and Iran are simultaneously pursuing negotiations and military action. The White House signals "progress." Yet in the same breath, President Donald Trump warns that he could "finish it again" if necessary. Iran insists it intends to uphold the ceasefire, while condemning limited American airstrikes as violations of it. What the world is witnessing is a strange kind of war. Not a full-scale conflict, but not genuine peace either. Neither a ceasefire nor a true end to hostilities. Negotiations proceed even as the guns keep firing. This is the defining character of the 21st-century gray zone war. But its essence runs deeper than any conventional military clash. Beneath the surface lie nuclear ambitions and oil, the dollar system and the U.S.–China rivalry for global supremacy, the collision of Islamic and Jewish civilizations, and the contest over supply chains in the age of artificial intelligence. The Strait of Hormuz has become more than a body of water. It is the fault line of the entire world order. The most striking feature of the current crisis is that war and diplomacy are advancing in parallel. Washington and Tehran are reportedly discussing a memorandum of understanding toward an end to hostilities, and both sides have sent signals that progress is being made. The U.S. State Department and White House have indicated that negotiations have not collapsed entirely, and Iran has officially kept the door to a diplomatic resolution open. Yet simultaneously, U.S. forces launched fresh airstrikes on Iranian military installations near the Strait of Hormuz within days of the latest exchange. Washington described the strikes as defensive, citing the interception of four Iranian drones and the destruction of a ground control station preparing to launch a fifth. On the surface, it appears a limited confrontation. Yet global financial markets and the international community do not view it that way. The reason is simple: the Strait of Hormuz is the heart of the world's oil supply chain. A critical share of the world's seaborne crude passes through this narrow passage each day. It is the energy lifeline of manufacturing nations such as South Korea, China, and Japan. Any prolonged blockade or sustained instability here would send oil prices surging, fracture global logistics, and risk reigniting inflation. Washington understands this better than anyone. Trump has cultivated the image of a president who does not drag out wars. His preferred method is coercion and negotiation punctuated by limited military action — a strategy designed to bend adversaries without committing to full-scale conflict. But Iran does not operate on an American timetable. Where the United States wants speed, Iran deploys time itself as a weapon. That is an ancient Persian survival strategy. America is a young superpower, barely 250 years old. Iran is a civilization with 5,000 years of memory. It has learned, across centuries of foreign pressure and imperial domination, how to endure. And so, as American military pressure intensifies, Iran's response is not frontal confrontation but a strategy of delay and psychological attrition. In the current crisis, rather than launching immediate large-scale retaliation, Tehran has pursued managed tension. It knows the dangers of total war all too well. The Iranian economy has been hollowed out by sanctions. Youth unemployment, rising prices, and deep systemic fatigue have accumulated at home. But Washington, too, has no appetite for a full war. The American economy has not fully escaped inflationary pressure. For Trump, with domestic politics always in view, a prolonged conflict carries serious political risk. The result is a dangerously balanced standoff in which neither side can deliver a decisive blow nor easily back down. Four Fault Lines at the Heart of the Negotiations The current U.S.–Iran negotiations revolve around four core disputes. The first, and most fundamental, is the nuclear question. Trump has repeatedly and unequivocally stated that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is an absolute red line. Washington's most acute concern is Iran's stockpile of approximately 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. Nuclear experts generally define weapons-grade uranium as enriched to around 90 percent, but material at 60 percent is already considered a significant danger threshold — technically, further enrichment to weapons-grade levels is achievable within a short window. The United States sees no path to a post-war settlement without eliminating or placing that material under verifiable control. From Tehran's perspective, however, nuclear capability is not merely a weapon. It is an insurance policy for regime survival. The fate of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi — who dismantled his nuclear program only to see his government collapse and himself killed — remains a defining trauma for Iran's leadership. No Iranian government can lightly surrender that leverage. The second dispute concerns the handling of enriched uranium. Washington has expressed strong reluctance to allow China or Russia to take custody of Iran's highly enriched stockpile. The logic is straightforward: both are American strategic rivals. The more realistic alternative may be third-country management. Pakistan presents a particularly intriguing option. It is the Muslim world's first nuclear-armed state, maintains a strategic relationship with China, is not fully hostile to the United States, and has deep ties with Saudi Arabia. A model under which some portion of Iran's highly enriched uranium is stored temporarily in an internationally co-managed facility on Pakistani soil — under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision — could allow Washington to address its proliferation concerns while offering Tehran a face-saving exit. Diplomacy, after all, is ultimately the art of creating an off-ramp for the other side without demanding their complete humiliation. The third issue is the Strait of Hormuz itself. This is not merely a shipping lane. It is a vein of modern civilization. The global economy still runs on oil and liquefied natural gas. The AI age has arrived, but semiconductor fabrication plants and data centers consume extraordinary quantities of energy. AI is, at its core, a massive energy consumer. The data centers, chip factories, cloud server farms, and hyperscale AI computing systems that power the new economy require energy on a scale that strains the imagination. That is precisely why America's big tech companies are racing to secure nuclear power, LNG, and renewable energy sources. The AI age is less an era "after oil" than an era of energy power restructuring. The Strait of Hormuz will therefore remain a critical variable in the global economy for the foreseeable future. For China in particular, Hormuz is a lifeline. China is the world's largest manufacturing economy and one of its largest crude oil importers. Its factories, logistics networks, cities, and industrial zones run on Middle Eastern energy flows. A prolonged disruption to Hormuz would deliver a potentially crippling blow to the Chinese economy. Washington understands this clearly. The American strategy in the region therefore extends beyond pressuring Iran. It also functions as a means of exerting leverage over China's energy supply chain — linking the Middle East crisis directly to the broader U.S.–China contest for global primacy. China, in turn, has deepened its strategic ties with Iran, as has Russia. Meanwhile, the United States seeks to build a new regional order centered on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel. The Middle East is becoming the intersection of a new cold war. If the original Cold War was a clash between liberalism and communism, the present contest is far more complex. AI supremacy and semiconductor supply chains, control over energy and maritime logistics, the dollar system and digital finance, religion and civilization — all of these are simultaneously in play. The dollar question is particularly important. The United States has used dollar dominance to exert control over the global economy. The SWIFT payment system and the international financial architecture are, in practice, American-centered structures. Sanctions against Iran were ultimately a financial blockade executed through that dollar system. Yet China, Russia, and certain Middle Eastern states have been quietly expanding their use of alternative arrangements — renminbi-denominated payments, gold transactions, and energy trades settled in local currencies. None of this yet threatens dollar hegemony. But Washington senses the risk. The reason is that one of the foundational pillars of dollar primacy has always been the petrodollar system — the convention by which Middle Eastern oil is priced and settled in dollars. If the Middle East order shifts from American dominance toward a multipolar framework, the dollar system itself will face long-term structural pressure. Beyond the Abraham Accords: The Case for a 'Noah Covenant' The conflicts now tearing through the Middle East are not simply clashes of national interest. They carry within them the collision of Jewish and Islamic civilizations, the rivalry between Shia and Sunni power blocs, and the confrontation between an American-led order and a multipolar alternative. The Trump era's Abraham Accords opened a new current in the region — the emergence of a pragmatic framework for coexistence centered on Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. But Iran remains outside that framework. That absence matters enormously. The path forward must go beyond the Abraham Accords toward something that might be called a "Noah Covenant." Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ultimately share a common root. Among the descendants of Noah in the biblical tradition, the line of Shem — the Semitic lineage — connects to the spiritual origins of the Jewish, Arab, and Persian worlds. The region's genuine peace can only begin from the honest recognition that "the other side cannot be completely eliminated." Coexistence is not defeat. It is survival. Three Axes Moving Global Financial Markets Global financial markets are currently moving along three great axes. The first is the AI revolution. The second is the U.S.–China rivalry for supremacy. The third is Middle East risk. Until now, global equity markets have been driven by the AI rally. American AI semiconductor companies and big tech firms remain the dominant force. But the Middle East variable represents the single greatest risk capable of destabilizing that trajectory at any moment. If Washington and Tehran achieve a limited agreement and Hormuz stability is preserved, global markets will likely resume their AI-led advance. But if negotiations collapse entirely and the Hormuz crisis escalates in earnest, international oil prices could spike sharply and global inflation could re-emerge. The U.S. Federal Reserve would be unable to cut interest rates freely. The world economy would face the prospect of stagflation. Chinese manufacturing and European industry would absorb severe damage — and South Korea would not be spared. What This Means for South Korea South Korea is geographically distant from the Middle East, but it sits in no safe zone. The Korean economy is export-driven and heavily dependent on energy imports. Instability in the Strait of Hormuz translates directly into higher costs for Korean industry. Companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix ultimately grow atop a foundation of global financial and energy stability. A surge in international oil prices and geopolitical turbulence would weigh on the entire Korean equity market. South Korea must therefore pursue three objectives simultaneously: diversification of its energy supply chain, reinforcement of its competitive industrial capabilities in AI and semiconductors, and a strategy of calibrated diplomatic balance in the Middle East. The world today does not move on military force alone. This is an era in which energy and AI, finance and supply chains, civilization and geopolitics all move together. The Strait of Hormuz is not simply a body of water. It is a microcosm of the entire 21st-century world order. And at this moment, humanity is testing that order on the surface of that sea. What is needed is not a balance of war, but an architecture of coexistence. Not the terror of nuclear weapons, but a system of trust and verifiable management. Not the transactional pragmatism of the Abraham Accords alone, but the civilizational imagination to move toward a Noah Covenant. That may be the only path through which the Middle East — and the world — survives what comes next. 2026-05-28 12:48:30
  • Hyundai Mobis joins Eclipse Foundations open-source SDV project
    Hyundai Mobis joins Eclipse Foundation's open-source SDV project SEOUL, May 28 (AJP) - Hyundai Mobis announced it has joined the Eclipse Foundation's Software-Defined Vehicle working group and will contribute to the S-Core project, a global open-source initiative to standardize the software platforms that underpin next-generation connected vehicles. The S-Core project, launched in late 2024 by a consortium of European firms, aims to build a common middleware layer for SDV systems certified to functional safety standard ASIL-B — the first of its kind built on an open-source foundation. Thirteen companies are currently involved in the effort, pooling resources to reduce duplicated investment and accelerate development of the shared technical base that applications such as autonomous driving depend on. Hyundai Mobis said Thursday it marks the first time the company has opened its proprietary code to outside developers. The company will contribute its container solution technology, which isolates individual software processes running on Linux to prevent interference between them. Through the project, Hyundai Mobis said it expects to collaborate with a broad range of automakers, parts suppliers, and software specialists, while positioning its technologies as candidates for global industry standards. The company added that open-sourcing its code is itself a public demonstration of confidence in its software capabilities. 2026-05-28 11:21:20
  • Naver pledges 1 trillion won for creators in AI shift
    Naver pledges 1 trillion won for creators in AI shift SEOUL, May 28 (AJP) - Naver will pour 1 trillion won ($663 million) into its content creator ecosystem over the next five years, the South Korean internet giant pledged, betting that proprietary data and creator partnerships — not raw model performance — will decide the next phase of the artificial intelligence race. The announced was unveiled at a media round table in central Seoul on Thursday led by Kim Kwang-hyun, Naver's chief data and contents officer, in his first public appearance since taking the role in February. The company, headed by CEO Choi Soo-yeon, said the spending will fund efforts to surface high-quality creators and feed their work into its AI services. "As a CDO, I will build up quality data — the foundation of execution-capable agents — through our creator ecosystem and external partnerships, connect it to AI to deliver differentiated user experiences, and dive more aggressively into the competition," Kim said. As part of the strategy, Naver is launching a fellowship called Naver Mate, which will select about 3,000 top contributors each month from its blog, cafe, Knowledge iN and Premium Content platforms, ranked by how often their work is cited in the company's AI Briefing service. Kim Sang-bum, head of Naver's search platform division, said the company's edge lies in its product-native large language model, a trove of about 10 billion data records, and the operational know-how built up over more than two decades of running its own search ecosystem. A next-generation HyperCLOVA X model will also be deployed shortly, he added. 2026-05-28 11:02:46
  • Kakao enters second mediation as labor unrest spreads
    Kakao enters second mediation as labor unrest spreads SEOUL, May 27 (AJP) - Labor and management at Kakao entered a second round of mediation at the Gyeonggi National Labor Relations Commission, with the talks widely seen as a make-or-break moment that could push South Korea's dominant messaging platform into its first-ever headquarters strike. The two sides failed to bridge their differences during a first session on May 18, extending the deadline for a resolution, entering the next round Wednesday. Four Kakao affiliates — Kakao Pay, Kakao Enterprise, DKTechin and XLGames — have already secured the legal right to strike after separate mediation efforts collapsed, and strike ballots held at five affiliates were all approved with votes in favor. The central dispute pits the union's demand for a transparent bonus formula against management's insistence on counting 5 million-won annual grants of restricted stock units (RSUs) as part of performance pay — a classification the union flatly rejects. The union is demanding a formula that ties bonuses to a fixed share of annual operating profit, modeled on a landmark agreement at SK hynix. Kakao headquarters has never gone on strike since the company's founding. The prospect of a walkout has already rattled investors: Kakao shares have fallen about 35 percent from levels around 64,000 won at the start of the year, closing at 40,450 won on Wednesday. The standoff at Kakao is unfolding as labor tensions spread across South Korea's corporate landscape. Samsung Electronics' union has been seeking 15 percent of chip-division operating profit, while Hyundai Motor's union opened 2026 wage talks demanding 30 percent of net profit — a wave of collective action signaling growing worker assertiveness at the country's most prominent conglomerates. 2026-05-27 17:25:40
  • AJP Focus: War-driven metal rally lifts South Koreas battery makers, squeezes carmakers
    AJP Focus: War-driven metal rally lifts South Korea's battery makers, squeezes carmakers SEOUL, May 27 (AJP) - A war-driven oil shock is reshaping the economics of South Korea's electric vehicle supply chain, lifting prices of lithium, nickel and cobalt to multi-year highs and handing the country's top battery makers a long-awaited tailwind even as carmakers Hyundai Motor and Kia confront fresh cost pressure. Battery-grade lithium traded at US$25.15 per kilogram on May 13, more than triple the $8.10 average of June last year and the highest level since September 2023, according to data from Fastmarkets. Nickel changed hands at $19,017.50 a ton on the London Metal Exchange the same day, up 27.8 percent from December, while cobalt hit $57.83 a pound, the strongest reading since July 2022. The rally reverses a brutal two-year slump in battery metals brought on by an electric-vehicle demand lull and a glut of Chinese supply. It now coincides with two converging forces: surging EV sales in Europe and Asia as drivers flee record-high petrol prices triggered by the Iran war, and a parallel boom in energy-storage demand tied to artificial intelligence data centers. Battery-electric cars accounted for 19.4 percent of the EU market in the first quarter, up from 15.2 percent a year earlier, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association said. March registrations alone jumped 51 percent on the year to more than 224,000 vehicles across 15 key European markets. Fastmarkets said in its January 2026 battery raw materials update that lithium prices had nearly doubled over the prior two months, driving battery cell costs up by 15 to 20 percent to around $46 to $48 per kilowatt-hour at the start of 2026. Supply has struggled to catch up, with Chinese giant CATL's Jianxiawo lepidolite mine in Jiangxi province idled since last August and Western refiners reluctant to invest. Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which together dominate global nickel and cobalt output, have also tightened mining and export quotas. For LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI and SK On — collectively the only serious non-Chinese force in the global battery market — the timing is fortunate. The three are linked to automakers through pricing contracts that pass raw-material costs through to customers with a lag of about three months, a mechanism that punished earnings during the 2024 to 25 price slide but should now flip into a tailwind. LG Energy Solution said in an April 30 statement that despite increase in shipments of both cylindrical EV and ESS batteries and ongoing cost-reduction efforts, the company posted a quarterly loss, driven by initial ramp-up costs associated with the expansion of ESS production sites. The company added that its ESS business now represents the mid-20 percent range of total revenue, underscoring the pivot from electric-vehicle cells to stationary storage that all three Korean firms are pursuing. "Western governments have little incentive to invest in lithium refining," said Choi Tae-yong, an analyst at DS Investment & Securities. The flip side is darkening for South Korea's carmakers. Batteries account for about 40 percent of the cost of an electric vehicle, and Hyundai Motor Group — which includes Kia — is already navigating fierce Chinese price competition at home and abroad. Hyundai sources roughly 95 percent of parts for its domestically built combustion-engine cars from Korean suppliers, but management is reviewing a broader shift to Chinese components. The group's global parts bill jumped to 84 trillion won last year, up 45 percent from 2021. Chinese batteries already power several South Korean-built models. Hyundai uses CATL cells in the Kona, while Kia equips the Ray, Niro, EV5 and PV5 with batteries from the Chinese supplier. CATL's batteries are about 10 to 20 percent cheaper than those produced here. Domestic market data tell a similar story. About 220,177 EVs were newly registered in Korea last year, with Kia ranking first at 60,609 units, or 27.5 percent of the market, followed by Tesla at 59,893 units and Hyundai at 55,461 units, the Korea Automobile & Mobility Association said. Chinese-made EVs surged 112.4 percent to 74,728 units, capturing a 33.9 percent market share. Whether higher cell prices will be absorbed by automakers or passed on to consumers remains an open question. Battery raw-material costs filtering into retail EV pricing would undercut the industry's long-stated goal of price parity with combustion-engine cars — and could deepen the cost advantage of Chinese rivals built around cheaper lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, chemistries. For now, the war-led surge has handed South Korean battery makers a near-term reprieve after their first simultaneous quarterly loss. For Hyundai and Kia, the road ahead looks rockier. 2026-05-27 15:58:07
  • South Korea joins OpenAIs trusted cyber access program
    South Korea joins OpenAI's trusted cyber access program SEOUL, May 27 (AJP) - South Korea has become one of the first two countries in Asia, together with Japan, to join OpenAI's Trusted Access for Cyber program, securing government-level access to the U.S. firm's most advanced artificial intelligence models for cybersecurity research and defense. The Ministry of Science and ICT announced Wednesday that Vice Minister Ryu Je-myung met OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon in Seoul on Tuesday to formalize Seoul's participation in the program, which grants vetted governments and institutions-controlled access to OpenAI's frontier models for defensive cyber work. The Korea Internet & Security Agency will serve as the implementing body, the ministry said, adding that the two sides agreed to continue talks on broader applications of AI in cybersecurity. The arrangement is expected to give Seoul a window into how rapidly advancing AI systems could be weaponized, and how to blunt that threat. "Through this cooperation with OpenAI, Korea has laid the groundwork to get ahead of AI-driven cyber threats," Ryu said, pledging to deepen engagement with global AI companies to sharpen the country's defensive capabilities. The two sides also discussed building a working framework between Seoul's AI Safety Institute and OpenAI for joint safety evaluations and research on increasingly capable models. OpenAI said it would actively review the proposal. Separately, the Korean government is exploring participation in Project Glasswing, a rival coalition led by Anthropic that pairs its unreleased Claude Mythos Preview model with about a dozen launch partners — including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia — and some 40 additional organizations to hunt down software vulnerabilities. No Korean entity has yet joined the initiative. 2026-05-27 10:43:49