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

HMM's Q2 profit jumps 52% as early peak season lifts freight rates SEOUL, August 13 (AJP) - South Korea's HMM, the country's largest container carrier, announced that second-quarter operating profit surged about 52 percent from a year earlier, as an early peak season and firmer freight rates powered a sharp recovery despite costlier fuel. According to regulatory filings released Thursday, operating profit jumped about 52 percent to 354.1 billion won ($248.7 million) and revenue surged about 30 percent to 3.40 trillion won, as peak-season demand arrived early from late May. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index averaged 1,957 points in the first half, about 15% above a year earlier. As for the first half of 2026, operating profit through June came to 623.2 billion won, down from 847.1 billion won a year earlier, while revenue climbed about 12 percent to 6.12 trillion won as higher freight rates cushioned the blow, the Busan-based company said. "Even amid uncertain market conditions, we have built a resilient earnings structure capable of generating consistent results," HMM said, crediting fuel-cost optimization after the outbreak of the Middle East conflict and a hub-and-spoke strategy that squeezed more efficiency from its fleet. The carrier struck a cautious note on the second half, warning that U.S. tariffs, congestion at the Panama Canal and major ports, and the lingering Middle East war would keep supply-chain risks elevated. It poured about 10 trillion won into ships and infrastructure over the 15 months to mid-2026, and last month lifted its 2030 investment blueprint to about 29 trillion won. That bet reflects a strategic pivot rather than mere expansion, HMM said, as it seeks to lock in relatively cheap vessels now to maximize future returns and cement its ascent toward the ranks of the world's top-tier carriers. Shares of HMM closed 21,050 won per stock, 1.41 percent lower than the day before. AJP Takeaways • HMM's second-quarter 2026 operating profit rose about 52% year-on-year to 354.1 billion won, driven by an early peak season and a first-half Shanghai Containerized Freight Index averaging 1,957 points, about 15% higher than a year earlier. • HMM reported first-half 2026 operating profit of 623.2 billion won on August 13, 2026, down about 26% from a year earlier, as a Middle East war raised fuel and voyage costs despite a 12% rise in revenue to 6.12 trillion won. • HMM in July 2026 raised its mid-to-long-term investment plan through 2030 to about 29 trillion won (about $19.8 billion), targeting a combined container and bulk fleet of 276 vessels under a hub-and-spoke strategy. 2026-08-13 15:56:16
Korea revives startup contest with doubled scale after data leak SEOUL, August 13 (AJP) - South Korea's Ministry of SMEs and Startups unveiled plans to relaunch its flagship "Startup for All" competition at twice the scale, pressing ahead with an ambitious idea-driven audition just weeks after a personal data breach forced the program's indefinite suspension. The ministry said Thursday it would recruit 10,000 participants for the second round — double the 5,000 chosen in the inaugural edition — under a plan announced jointly with related agencies at a national entrepreneurship strategy meeting. The competition invites ordinary citizens to compete on the strength of an idea alone, without the polished business plans or lengthy resumes that conventional government contests demand. Selected challengers receive early-stage mentoring, incubation and a shot at nationwide auditions. Of the 10,000 slots, 8,000 will be allocated to general and technology categories and 2,000 to a local track. At least 80 percent of those chosen must be prospective founders yet to launch a business, while 70 percent will come from outside the greater Seoul area in a bid to spread entrepreneurship across the regions. The revival comes after a bruising episode that shook public trust in the program. On June 18, the ministry disclosed that the personal information of all 5,000 first-round finalists — including names, email addresses and summaries of their startup ideas — had been exposed. An internal investigation found the data had been harvested not by an outside hacker but by an AI solutions company taking part as a support-service vendor, which allegedly used abnormal API requests and web-crawling techniques to scrape email addresses hidden from public view before sending promotional messages. Han Seong-sook, then the SMEs minister who designed the platform and has since become Korea's second female prime minister, issued a public apology on June 22, saying she had failed to protect the trust of citizens who took up the challenge of starting a business. Applications for the second round open on Aug. 20, with successful candidates to be announced in early October, the ministry said. Of the 10,000 challengers, 2,200 will advance to regional auditions and 400 to a national contest. To guard against a repeat, the ministry said it would tighten platform security and personal-data controls, submit the system to a National Intelligence Service security review and a privacy-impact assessment by the Personal Information Protection Commission, and narrow its roster of AI solution vendors to about 50 firms, down from the 283 companies that supplied solutions in the first round. The ministry also moved to knit the contest into a wider ecosystem, establishing startup "clubs" in the Seoul, Daejeon, Busan and Gwangju regions where veteran founders, investors and support agencies gather with challengers, and issuing "challenge certificates" that grant preferential treatment in state financing and research funding. "In the second Startup for All, we will open the door of challenge to more citizens and actively support re-challenge and startups across diverse fields, while building a foundation for entrepreneurs to grow together within the startup ecosystem even after their challenge," First Vice Minister Roh Yong-seok said. AJP Takeaways • South Korea's SMEs ministry is doubling its "Startup for All" contest to 10,000 participants, pressing ahead just weeks after a June data breach exposed all 5,000 first-round finalists' personal information and forced the program's indefinite suspension. • The relaunch pairs expansion with damage control: the vendor pool blamed for the leak is being cut from 283 firms to about 50, and the platform will face a National Intelligence Service security review and a privacy-impact assessment. • The breach toppled to the top of the ministry — then-minister Han Seong-sook, who designed the platform, apologized publicly before becoming Korea's second female prime minister — underscoring the political stakes riding on the program's recovery. 2026-08-13 10:31:59
Naver invests in wave-powered ocean data center startup Panthalassa SEOUL, August 13 (AJP) - Naver announced it has invested in Panthalassa, a U.S. startup building floating, wave-powered artificial intelligence data centers, deepening its push to lock down next-generation infrastructure as the global scramble for computing power intensifies. The deal revealed Thursday extends a rapid buildout by Naver, which has been racing to secure AI capacity through a string of high-profile partnerships. In July, the company, Nvidia and Brookfield Asset Management agreed to expand Naver's AI factory at its GAK Sejong hyperscale data center to 200 megawatts by 2028 under a $10 billion financing plan, one of the largest sovereign AI infrastructure commitments outside the United States. Founded in Oregon in 2016, Panthalassa is developing buoyant data centers that draw power directly from ocean waves, sidestepping the fuel and land costs that weigh on conventional facilities. Its nodes generate electricity, run AI computations and cool their servers with cold seawater, all offshore and untethered to the grid. The systems transmit results to shore through low-Earth-orbit satellite networks such as Starlink, which offer low latency well suited to AI inference and skirt the geographic limits of undersea cabling. The design lets the platforms perform AI workloads at sea without dedicated transmission lines. Panthalassa has tested earlier platforms dubbed Ocean-1 and Ocean-2, and plans to deploy its Ocean-3 pilot series this year, targeting commercial operation in 2027. "Naver is expanding into AI data centers and rapidly securing differentiated infrastructure through global partnerships," Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon said. "We will invest preemptively in next-generation technologies such as wave-based renewable AI data centers to strengthen our competitiveness in the global AI infrastructure market." AJP Takeaways • Naver said on Aug. 13, 2026, that it has invested in Panthalassa, an Oregon-based startup founded in 2016 that builds floating, wave-powered AI data centers cooled by seawater and linked to shore via low-Earth-orbit satellites such as Starlink. • The deal builds on Naver's aggressive AI infrastructure push, including a July 2026 agreement with NVIDIA and Brookfield Asset Management to expand its AI factory at the GAK Sejong data center to 200 megawatts by 2028 under a $10 billion financing plan. • Panthalassa, backed by investors including Peter Thiel, raised $140 million in May 2026 and plans to deploy its Ocean-3 pilot series this year, targeting commercial operation in 2027. 2026-08-13 09:33:03
Kairospace verifies satellite de-orbit device in space SEOUL, August 13 (AJP) - A South Korean startup announced it had successfully demonstrated a device designed to pull defunct satellites out of orbit faster, a modest but concrete step in the global effort to curb the growing hazard of space debris. Kairospace said Thursday that its in-house de-orbit system, dubbed DORB, had proven its performance aboard a CubeSat launched into space by South Korea's homegrown Nuri rocket, in what the company described as a full validation under real orbital conditions. The system is built to stop retired or malfunctioning satellites from lingering in low orbit for years and becoming space junk. It works by expanding a satellite's surface area to increase atmospheric drag, hastening the craft's natural descent. Stowed, it folds into a sliver measuring 0.25 units — one unit being a 10-centimeter cube — from metal-coated polymer film pleated origami-style, then unfurls into a broad structure once triggered. Kairospace fitted DORB to KSAT3U, a 3U CubeSat carried aloft on Nuri's third flight in May 2023. The satellite was tasked both with observing weather through polarized imaging of the Earth's surface and with demonstrating that it could dispose of itself to help thin the orbital clutter. After about a year of normal operation, the company deployed the device and found the satellite's rate of orbital descent had more than doubled. Other CubeSats launched alongside it now sit about 80 to 150 kilometers higher, a gap Kairospace said makes the effect plainly visible. The firm said that even the public can watch the shift themselves through the satellite's NORAD tracking number, 56746. KSAT3U remains fully operational even after the device unfurled, and in May it captured and transmitted footage of the Busan New Port area. "Space debris is a critical challenge that the entire global space industry must solve together," said Shin Gyung-woo, Kairospace's chief executive, adding that the company would channel the result into European trials and global commercialization to build "a product that can compete in world markets." AJP Takeaways • A domestically built CubeSat, launched on the Nuri rocket, has become a rare in-orbit proof point for South Korean space-debris mitigation technology, an area where global regulation is tightening but few players have flight-verified hardware. • The measured result — a doubling of descent speed, publicly trackable via NORAD ID 56746 — gives Kairospace a credible export pitch as it moves to European trials with Gyeongnam Technopark backing. • Worth watching: the company's own project page describes a hydrogen-inflated balloon rather than the folded-film mechanism in this release. Reconciling that discrepancy, and confirming the projected reduction in total de-orbit time, would strengthen any follow-up. 2026-08-13 08:14:05
Naver confirms KEF membership, plays down labor-tension angle SEOUL, August 12 (AJP) - Naver, South Korea's largest internet company, has become the first domestic IT firm to join the Korea Enterprises Federation, the country's main employers' body. A Naver spokesperson said Wednesday that the membership, secured late last year, should be read chiefly through the lens of industrial convergence rather than labor relations. "This is a period when AI is accelerating connections across industries, and it should be seen as an effort to closely integrate with a variety of companies," the spokesperson said. The KEF is a management-side organization that specializes in advising member firms on labor and personnel matters. Experts say Naver's decision to join stands out because IT companies, long reliant on autonomous corporate cultures, had historically shown little interest in the federation's labor-management expertise. The spokesperson confirmed the KEF enrollment but said the company was not aware of any link between the membership and the kind of forceful union activity seen recently at rival Kakao. Industry accounts had tied the move to the amended trade union law known as the Yellow Envelope Act, which took effect in March and sharply broadens the liability of parent firms for subcontracted workers. Naver sits atop a sprawling structure of subsidiaries and lower-tier affiliates, a web that the revised law brings into closer regulatory focus. The company's union chapter, affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, has for years pressed headquarters to bargain directly over pay and welfare for workers at affiliated firms, and it plans to hold a ceremony on Aug. 20 declaring integrated bargaining across Naver group companies. AJP Takeaways • Naver has become the first South Korean IT company to join the Korea Enterprises Federation, the country's main management-side employers' body, confirming a membership secured late last year. • The company played down suggestions that the move was a defensive response to union pressure, with a spokesperson framing it instead as an effort to integrate with other firms as AI accelerates cross-industry convergence. • The membership comes as labor tensions build across Korea's tech sector, following Kakao's first-ever strike in June and ahead of a Naver union ceremony on Aug. 20 declaring integrated bargaining across group companies. 2026-08-12 17:27:21
KT Q2 profit falls 36% on tough property-gain base, AI revenue climbs SEOUL, August 12 (AJP) - KT reported a 36.1 percent year-on-year drop in second-quarter operating profit, as the absence of a large one-off property gain that lifted last year's earnings to a record weighed on the bottom line. According to regulatory filings released Wednesday, the telecommunications carrier posted consolidated operating profit of 648.3 billion won ($457 million) for the April to June quarter, down from 1.01 trillion won a year earlier. Revenue fell 10.1 percent to 6.68 trillion won. Net profit slid 34.5 percent from a year earlier, dragged down partly by a 54 billion won fine imposed last month by the Personal Information Protection Commission. Revenue from its AX, or AI transformation, business jumped 22.3 percent, buoyed by rising demand from financial firms and growth at cloud unit KT Cloud, even as legacy wireless and fixed-line revenue slipped. "We will secure new growth engines based on AX while faithfully carrying out our corporate value-enhancement plan, rewarding shareholders and investors with sustained results," Chief Executive Park Yoon-young said. Shares of KT closed at 52,700 won, 0.19 percent lower than the day before. AJP Takeaways • KT's Q2 operating profit fell 36.1 percent year-on-year to 648.3 billion won ($457 million), mainly because last year's quarter was inflated by a one-off property-development gain that produced record earnings. • Against the first quarter of this year, operating profit rose 34.3 percent, and revenue from the carrier's AX (AI transformation) business jumped 22.3 percent, signaling momentum in its pivot toward AI and cloud. • KT set a 2028 target of doubling AX revenue from 2025 levels and a 9-10 percent return on equity, backed by about 1 trillion won in cumulative share buybacks and cancellations. 2026-08-12 16:56:17
Daegu named first hub for South Korea's AI drug-discovery drive SEOUL, August 12 (AJP) - South Korea has designated the southeastern city of Daegu as the first innovation hub for artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery under "K-Moonshot," the government's flagship program to embed AI across national science and technology research. The Ministry of Science and ICT said on Wednesday it had held a launch ceremony in Daegu for a pilot project to build an "AIxBio" research base focused on synthetic new drugs, drawing together universities, companies, hospitals and research institutes in an open innovation ecosystem. At the heart of the Daegu project is a so-called "Lab-in-the-Loop" system, in which AI models, autonomous experiments, validation and data feedback continuously reinforce one another. The ministry said the design aims to let laboratories and algorithms advance in tandem, offering a new paradigm for how medicines are found. The pilot will be run by a Daegu consortium comprising Kyungpook National University, its affiliated hospital, and the Daegu-Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, working with firms such as HLB Life Science to verify AI-proposed compounds in partly automated labs. "The competitiveness of future drug development hinges on how effectively we connect and apply AI technology and data within real experimental environments," said Oh Dae-hyun, the ministry's director general for future strategic technology policy, adding that next year the government would build on the pilot's results to expand into other areas of AI-bio. AJP Takeaways • Daegu becomes the first regional hub in the K-Moonshot program's AI drug-discovery mission, hosting a "Lab-in-the-Loop" system that links AI prediction, autonomous experiments and validation in a continuous cycle. • The pilot is led by a consortium of Kyungpook National University, its hospital, and the K-MEDI hub foundation, partnering with firms including HLB Life Science to test AI-proposed compounds in partly automated labs. • The ministry framed the effort as a bid to close the gap with the United States and Britain, which have already built dedicated AI-bio bases, and said next year it would extend the model into other AI-bio fields. 2026-08-12 14:47:14
Samsung SDI to buy out GM's Indiana battery plant SEOUL, August 11 (AJP) - Samsung SDI announced Tuesday it will buy out General Motors' entire 49.99 percent stake in their U.S. battery joint venture, SynergyCells, giving the South Korean cell maker its first wholly owned battery plant in North America. The two companies also signed a joint development agreement to co-develop next-generation prismatic batteries for electric vehicles, drawing on Samsung SDI's high energy density and fast-charging technologies. The resulting cells are expected to power GM's future EV models. SynergyCells was established in 2024 in New Carlisle, Indiana, on the back of a combined investment of about $3.5 billion. The plant, still under construction, is designed for an annual capacity of 27 gigawatt-hours. Financial terms of the stake transfer were not disclosed. Samsung SDI plans to install energy storage system battery lines at the same site, a hedge against sluggish EV demand and a bid to capture the rapidly expanding North American ESS market. "This decision reflects changes in the market while continuing our strategic partnership with GM," said a Samsung SDI official. "At this plant we will sustain our joint efforts for the coming EV era, and at the same time respond aggressively to ESS demand in the United States." The handover extends GM's retreat from battery ventures. The Detroit automaker earlier sold its stake in a Michigan plant to LG Energy Solution, and its Ultium Cells joint venture in Tennessee has shifted toward stationary storage cells, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the Indiana sale. AJP Takeaways • Samsung SDI said on Aug. 11, 2026, that it will acquire General Motors Co.'s entire 49.99 percent stake in SynergyCells, their electric-vehicle battery joint venture in New Carlisle, Indiana, giving the South Korean company its first wholly owned battery plant in North America. • Samsung SDI and General Motors signed a joint development agreement the same day to co-develop next-generation prismatic batteries, which are expected to be fitted in General Motors' future electric vehicle models. • Samsung SDI will add energy storage system battery lines at the Indiana plant, which was launched in 2024 on a combined investment of about $3.5 billion and is designed for an annual capacity of 27 gigawatt-hours. 2026-08-11 15:02:33
Unitree heads to market as China dominates humanoid robotics' first act SEOUL, August 11 (AJP) - In humanoid robotics’ first commercial act, there is one dominant player: China, whose manufacturers accounted for more than 97 percent of global shipments in the first half of 2026. South Korea, despite betting heavily on physical AI, remains largely a robotics powerhouse inside its own factory gates. Korea has 1,220 industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, the highest density in the world, according to the International Federation of Robotics. But that strength remains concentrated in conventional factory automation, while the country does not target mass production of humanoids until 2029. China is already putting its humanoid champions into the capital market. Unitree Robotics opened subscriptions Monday for a $904 million Shanghai IPO that would make it China’s first mainland-listed humanoid robot maker and the next marquee Chinese technology listing after memory-chip maker CXMT’s $8.6 billion STAR Market IPO last month. Retail demand for Unitree was more than 8,000 times the shares available, underscoring the investor frenzy surrounding China’s physical-AI push. Unitree is selling 40.45 million new shares, or 10 percent of its enlarged capital, at 150.8 yuan each to raise about 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million). The price implies a market value of about 61 billion yuan, or roughly $9 billion, and a valuation of about 219 times 2025 earnings. “Entering the capital market is a new starting point for Unitree,” founder and Chief Executive Wang Xingxing said during the IPO roadshow, pledging to deepen work on core technologies for general-purpose embodied intelligence. The listing comes as China converts an early hardware advantage into shipment scale. Global humanoid shipments reached about 19,100 units in the first half, up 272 percent from 5,100 a year earlier, according to research firm Smart Analytics Global. Shanghai-based AgiBot led with about 8,400 units, or 44 percent of the market, while Unitree shipped about 5,900, taking 31 percent. Chinese companies together supplied more than 97 percent of the global total. More significantly, over 70 percent of shipments went to industrial and commercial applications, up from about half a year earlier — evidence that at least part of the market is beginning to move beyond demonstrations and research laboratories. Capital is following the machines. Financing in China’s embodied-intelligence sector reached 93.5 billion yuan across 322 deals in the first half, according to IT Juzi data, while Beijing has elevated humanoid robots and embodied intelligence in its 2026 to 2030 technology strategy. DeepSeek added another link between China’s AI and robotics ecosystems by investing 140.8 million yuan in Unitree’s IPO for a 2.31 percent stake through the strategic placement. The two companies also agreed to cooperate on AI models for humanoid robots. South Korea’s diagnosis of its own position is blunt. The Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials said in an April policy report that 2026 marks a commercial tipping point for humanoids and identified two major Korean weaknesses: a shortage of homegrown AI foundation models and a fragile supply chain for humanoid-specific components such as actuators and reducers. Neither gap is closing overnight. Korea’s government-backed sovereign AI competition is now down to LG AI Research, SK Telecom, Upstage and Motif Technologies, with one of the four due to be eliminated in the current second-stage evaluation. Naver Cloud was disqualified earlier for failing the project’s originality requirement, while NC AI failed to advance on its evaluation score. What Korea has built at greater scale is the infrastructure to run AI. Private groups have outlined about 550 trillion won of investment to build 8.4 gigawatts of AI data-center capacity by 2029. The National AI Computing Center broke ground in Haenam, South Jeolla Province, on Aug. 3 with a project cost of about 2.5 trillion won and plans for computing capacity equivalent to roughly 15,000 advanced GPUs by 2028. President Lee Jae Myung has also put AI at the center of industrial policy, with 10.1 trillion won allocated to AI-related spending in the 2026 budget. But Korea’s humanoid timetable stretches further out. The government’s manufacturing-AI strategy calls for an industrial humanoid foundation model by 2028 and annual production of at least 1,000 humanoid robots beginning in 2029. The broader K-Humanoid Alliance is bringing government, robot makers, component suppliers and AI companies together around that goal. The United States has formidable names but, so far, little comparable shipment volume. Tesla has been preparing its Fremont factory for Optimus production, but mass output has yet to materialize. Figure AI’s Figure 03 has begun work at BMW’s Spartanburg plant on logistics tasks after an earlier Figure 02 deployment, putting the robots into real factory operations but still far short of Chinese shipment volumes. Boston Dynamics, owned by Hyundai Motor Group, unveiled the production version of its electric Atlas at CES 2026. Hyundai plans to deploy Atlas at its Georgia manufacturing operations from 2028 and aims to build manufacturing capacity for 30,000 robots a year by then — potentially giving Korea its most substantial route into humanoid scale, albeit through a U.S.-based subsidiary. Washington, meanwhile, has erected a new regulatory barrier around the U.S. market on national-security grounds. The Federal Communications Commission on July 28 added foreign-produced “advanced robotic devices,” including humanoids and quadrupeds, to its Covered List after an interagency national-security determination. New covered models generally cannot receive the FCC equipment authorization required for import, marketing or sale in the United States unless they receive conditional approval from the Department of War. Previously authorized models are exempt. That rule offers Seoul no automatic shelter. The FCC measure turns on where a robot is produced, not whether it is Chinese. New humanoids produced in South Korea, Japan or any other foreign country therefore face the same authorization barrier unless granted conditional approval. Unitree, meanwhile, has told investors that its existing humanoid and quadruped models already hold U.S. approvals, leaving the current lineup saleable while future models face uncertainty. U.S. sales accounted for 13.3 percent of Unitree’s revenue last year. For now, Korea has a timetable and formidable manufacturing infrastructure. China has something more immediate: a market, shipment scale and now a pipeline of robot makers heading into public markets. Unitree’s IPO makes the gap unusually visible. China is already financing the companies producing the first wave of humanoids at scale, while Korea is still building the models, components and production system it hopes will be ready for the next one. AJP Takeaways • Unitree’s $904 million IPO is poised to create China’s first mainland-listed humanoid robot maker, with its retail offering more than 8,000 times oversubscribed. • Chinese manufacturers supplied more than 97 percent of the roughly 19,100 humanoids shipped globally in the first half of 2026, led by AgiBot at 44 percent and Unitree at 31 percent. • South Korea has the world’s highest industrial-robot density but remains years from humanoid scale, targeting a robot AI foundation model in 2028 and production of at least 1,000 humanoids annually from 2029. 2026-08-11 14:44:25
CJ CheilJedang's Q2 operating profit slides on costs, weak home market SEOUL, August 11 (AJP) - CJ CheilJedang, South Korea's largest food and bioscience group, announced that its second-quarter operating profit fell sharply as sluggish domestic demand and oil-driven increases in packaging and raw material costs squeezed margins. According to regulatory filings released Tuesday, consolidated revenue edged up 1.7 percent from a year earlier to 7.36 trillion won (about $5.19 billion) in the April-June quarter, while operating profit dropped 27.1 percent to 257.6 billion won. Excluding logistics affiliate CJ Logistics, revenue climbed 10.2 percent to 4.20 trillion won and operating profit fell 18.4 percent to 161.9 billion won, the company said. The food division posted revenue of 2.84 trillion won, up 5.8 percent, but operating profit slid 21.3 percent to 70.9 billion won. Overseas food sales rose 10.1 percent to 1.51 trillion won, led by the company's global strategic products, chiefly frozen dumplings and Hetbahn instant rice. Growth was broad-based abroad, with sales up 10 percent in the Americas, 19 percent in Europe, 21 percent in the Asia-Pacific region and 5 percent in China. At home, revenue inched up 1.4 percent to 1.34 trillion won as new health-and-wellness products cushioned a weak won and softer selling prices. The bioscience arm lifted revenue 20.8 percent to 1.35 trillion won on stronger sales of lysine and specialty amino acids such as arginine and isoleucine, though operating profit fell 15.9 percent to 91.0 billion won amid fiercer competition in high-margin tryptophan. Foreign-exchange and derivative valuation losses pushed the unit-level business to a quarterly net loss of 23.9 billion won. "We will speed up the expansion of K-food into new global territory with global strategic products such as dumplings and Hetbahn, and focus on improving profitability through wider bioscience sales and cuts in manufacturing and fixed costs," said a CJ CheilJedang spokesperson. Shares of CJ CheilJedang traded at 192,900 won per stock at 10:51 a.m., 6.13 percent lower than the day before. AJP Takeaways • CJ CheilJedang reported on Aug. 11, 2026 that consolidated second-quarter revenue rose 1.7 percent from a year earlier to 7.36 trillion won while operating profit fell 27.1 percent to 257.6 billion won, as weak domestic demand and higher packaging and raw material costs squeezed margins. • Overseas food revenue rose 10.1 percent to 1.51 trillion won in the second quarter of 2026, with sales up 19 percent in Europe and 21 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, while bioscience revenue climbed 20.8 percent to 1.35 trillion won. • CJ CheilJedang said it will use a business restructuring taking effect in the third quarter of 2026 to expand global strategic products such as dumplings and Hetbahn instant rice and to cut manufacturing and fixed costs. 2026-08-11 10:55:55