Journalist
Park Sae-jin박세진
swatchsjp@ajupress.com
Assistant EditorForeign embassies in Seoul & Geopolitics, Diplomacy, Policy
Experienced journalist and editor at AJU PRESS specializing in multilingual news. I cover international diplomacy, geolpolitics, and policy, consistently delivering highly accurate, compelling reporting for a worldwide audience.
"Reporting the facts. Shaping the narrative. Every second counts."
Latest by Park Sae-jin
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Brazilian artists donate works to Seoul embassy before Biennale SEOUL, August 22 (AJP) - Thirteen Brazilian artists have donated works to the permanent collection of the Brazilian Embassy in Seoul, the embassy announced at a closing reception Friday evening, just over two weeks before their country opens its first national pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale. The pavilion, "Devorações do Amanhã – Brasil em rebento," or "Devouring Tomorrow," opens Sept. 5 at the Gwangju History and Folk Museum and runs through Nov. 15. It brings together 35 Brazilian artists across several generations and regions, under curators Aldones Nino and Bruna Levi. The Gwangju Biennale has hosted national pavilions alongside its main exhibition since 2018. Brazil has never had one until now. The announcement came at Brazil Hall, the embassy's cultural space in Samcheong-dong in central Seoul, where roughly 60 guests gathered on the final night of a three-week artist residency called Tropismo. Diplomats, artists and invited guests moved through a room still holding the work made there over the past three weeks. Aldones Nino, a Brazilian curator based in Spain, told the room that works by Ayla Tavares, Heloisa Hariadne, Isabella Ogêda, Lucas Lugarinho, Manauara Clandestina, Marcos Chaves, Maruan Sipert, Nathan Braga, Patrícia Abbott, Shinji Nagabe, Vicente de Mello, Uýra Capelobo and Vinicius Gerheim would enter the embassy collection. He said the residency was never meant to be a warm-up for the exhibition in Gwangju. "When I first envisioned this program, I wanted to create something that would go beyond serving as a preparatory stage for an exhibition," Nino said. Ambassador Fernando Meirelles de Azevedo Pimentel, who presented his credentials to President Lee Jae Myung on July 22, said the donations matter to how the mission presents Brazil in South Korea. "It is for us critical that the embassy becomes also the face of Brazil," the ambassador said. "We show our people, we show our art, and we cannot do it in a more beautiful way than through the contributions we will be receiving from the artists." He reached for a Korean idea to describe what the residency had done. Tropism, in biology, is the way a plant grows toward light or water. The ambassador said it echoed Cheon-ji-in, an old Korean and East Asian framework that treats heaven, earth and human beings as one connected whole. The three elements are familiar to most Koreans from the alphabet itself, since the vowels of hangeul are built from a dot for heaven, a horizontal line for earth and a vertical line for a standing person. "Tropism and Cheon-Ji-In emerge from different traditions, but they share a simple and profound insight: we do not grow in isolation," he said. The residency ran on almost nothing. According to the organizers' own transparency statement, the embassy lent Brazil Hall free of charge, and there was no budget for airfare, accommodation, production or operating costs. The artists covered those themselves. Vicente de Mello, a photographer who is also among the donors, directed the program day to day. The ambassador said the artists pushed to stay past closing. "The artists kept bugging us to give them more time, leave the studio later. 'We need to work until midnight,'" he said. "We did as much as we could. I'm sure they liked the overtime." Some of the work went well outside a studio. Isabella Ogêda, who works at the meeting point of art and science, spent part of her stay at a nuclear fusion laboratory. "My time in Korea has included research with the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) and a visit to KSTAR in Daejeon, which has been particularly important for the new work I am developing," she said. KSTAR is South Korea's superconducting fusion research reactor, a machine that holds plasma at temperatures far hotter than the core of the sun in an attempt to reproduce the reaction that powers stars. Speaking after the reception, Nino said the value of a residency shows up later, in how artists work once they are home. "There are artists who made their artwork in a specific form, but after this experience, a lot of artists changed the mode to create their artworks," he said. "I believe this is the strongest point in an artistic residency: the moment the artist goes back to their country and changes the mode to see the world." He said Asia remains largely unexplored territory for Brazilian artists. "In Brazil, it's very common to have connections with Europe and North America, but with the Asian world, the artists don't have the opportunity to investigate," Nino said. He said his hope for the pavilion is that it runs in both directions, with more Brazilian artists showing in South Korea and Korean artists invited to Brazil. The 16th Gwangju Biennale, directed by Ho Tzu Nyen under the title "You Must Change Your Life," opens Sept. 5 and runs to Nov. 15. 2026-08-22 19:21:24 -
Kookmin engineering students exhibit 10 years of car drawings SEOUL, August 21 (AJP) - Engineering students at a Seoul university have spent a decade learning to draw the machines they study, and the results are on public view this month and next in two exhibitions outside their own campus. The show is called The Drawing, and it runs at the BODA Gallery at Incheon Academy of Science and Arts through Aug. 27 before moving to the Kyung Hee University Museum of Art, where it stays through Sept. 11. Kookmin University is presenting it as part of its 80th anniversary. The university was founded in September 1946. The exercise behind it began in 2017 as an attempt to put drawing into engineering education. Students in Kookmin's automotive and mobility program observe cars and mechanical systems directly and draw what they see, on the theory that the act of rendering something forces a closer look at it than reading a specification does. The stated aim is to sharpen observation and spatial reasoning rather than to produce artists. Ten editions later it has grown past the classroom. This year's exhibition brings in fine arts students from Kyung Hee University and a group of invited artists, so the drawings hang alongside work made from an entirely different training. The Incheon leg is tied to that school's own 10th anniversary. Incheon Academy of Science and Arts, a state-run school for gifted students that opened in 2016, teaches science and the arts together, which makes it an unusually apt room for the material. The exhibition is organized by Kookmin's program office for future mobility, part of a government-funded scheme that has universities share courses across institutions in priority fields. Shin Sung-hwan heads the office. Lee Dong-heon, the Kookmin professor who has taught the course and prepared the exhibitions, said the drawings are not judged as drawings. "The Drawing is not aimed at drawing well," Lee said. "The meaning is in the process of observing a subject closely and visually expressing the structure and the relationships you have understood." He said the tenth year had widened the show into an exchange among several educational institutions, students from different majors, and working artists. 2026-08-21 16:18:48 -
BOYNEXTDOOR opens 13-show Japan run with new single SEOUL, August 21 (AJP) - The Japan leg of K-pop boy band BOYNEXTDOOR's first world tour opens Friday at K-Arena Yokohama, the start of a three-night run that carries the six-member group through 13 shows in six cities into October. Last year, the group played six Japanese cities across 13 dates, but in concert halls seating a few thousand, venues such as Pacifico Yokohama and Fukuoka Sunpalace. Every date sold out. This year, the same city count runs through arenas, starting with K-Arena Yokohama and taking in Osaka-jo Hall in September. After Yokohama, the tour moves to Saga on Aug. 29 and 30, Osaka on Sept. 9 and 10, Miyagi on Sept. 19 and 20, Nagano on Sept. 25 and 26, and Chiba on Oct. 10 and 11. The Saga show on Aug. 29 will be screened live in cinemas worldwide. The Yokohama shows carry the first tour performance of "Boom Boom Boom," the group's second Japanese digital single, released Aug. 18. The song had its first live airing the night before on TBS's music program "CDTV Live! Live!" KOZ Entertainment said the track entered LINE Music's real-time song chart and reached No. 6 on the iTunes Japan top songs chart as of midnight on Aug. 19, and came in at No. 5 on Oricon's daily digital singles ranking dated Aug. 18. Both of the group's Japanese singles have been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan. BOYNEXTDOOR, made up of Sungho, Riwoo, Jaehyun, Taesan, Leehan and Woonhak, debuted in May 2023 as the first idol group launched by KOZ Entertainment, the label founded by the rapper Zico, who produces the group himself. KOZ operates under HYBE, the company that also houses BTS. The tour opened in Seoul from July 17 to 19 at KSPO DOME, where the group played to about 31,800 people over three nights, then moved to Busan for three days at Sajik Arena from July 31 to Aug. 2. "We are glad to show how much we have grown," the members said in a statement released through KOZ Entertainment ahead of the Yokohama opening. Between the Japanese dates, the group returns to Korean promotion. A repackaged edition of HOME, its first studio album, released in June, arrives Sept. 28, with domestic activity through October before the Chiba shows close out the Japan leg. Knock On Vol.2 runs 34 shows in 24 cities, including a North American leg from late October and a final Asian stretch, and ends in Bangkok on Jan. 30, 2027. 2026-08-21 16:05:38 -
BIGBANG returns as trio for first stadium tour in 9 years SEOUL, August 21 (AJP) - Nine years after its last full tour, BIGBANG opens a 20th anniversary world tour Friday at Goyang Stadium northwest of Seoul, the first concert run in the group's history with three members on stage instead of five. The Goyang shows run three nights through Sunday and are sold out, including seats released later with restricted views. General ticketing drew roughly 210,000 people into the online queue at once, the heaviest demand for any single concert or festival sale in South Korea this year. Domestic tickets were sold exclusively through Coupang Play, which is also the presenting sponsor. BIGBANG debuted on Aug. 19, 2006, and spent the following decade as one of the defining acts of K-pop's second generation, with hits including "Lies," "Haru Haru" and "Bang Bang Bang." The lineup narrowed to three, G-Dragon, Taeyang and Daesung, after the departures of Seungri and T.O.P. The group's last full touring cycle ended with the Last Dance tour in 2017. Friday's show also carries the first live performance of "BiiiG," a digital single released on Aug. 19, the exact date of the group's 20th anniversary. It is BIGBANG's first release in four years and four months, since "Still Life" in April 2022. G-Dragon wrote and composed the track, a high-energy hip-hop song built on a heavy beat and a repeating hook. The set list mixes those older hits with solo segments for each member. All three took part in building the show, working on the song order, the stage design and the direction. The production leans heavily on overseas talent. A live band led by Wow Jones, who has worked with Usher, Post Malone and Rihanna, plays every song. Mike Carson, who directed the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, and Es Devlin, who designed the stage for the 2012 London Olympics closing ceremony, both worked on the staging. The centerpiece is a 23-ton moving LED structure that uses multi-motor torque synchronization to shift position during the show. The tour title, "XX : COSMOS," gave the group a theme to build promotions around. BIGBANG filmed a collaboration with a Korean science YouTube channel on the physics of the actual big bang, and the Korea AeroSpace Administration named the three its first honorary ambassadors. A fan event on the Han River, a lighting show around Jamsil and a media exhibition in central Seoul filled out the run-up. G-Dragon announced the tour himself in April, from the stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where BIGBANG performed a roughly hour-long set. After Goyang, the tour moves through 19 cities and 33 shows across North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia, including Auckland, Paris, London, Sydney, Tokyo and Jakarta. YG Entertainment said more dates and locations will be announced, so the final count may grow. Demand outside South Korea has followed a similar pattern, with the Auckland date selling out in 30 minutes and a second show added. "BiiiG" reached No. 1 on iTunes song charts in 24 regions and hit No. 2 on the worldwide song chart, according to YG Entertainment. At home it went to No. 1 on Melon's TOP100 one hour after release, on a chart that combines 24-hour listening data with the most recent hour, and set this year's record on the platform for the most listeners in a song's first hour. 2026-08-21 15:48:38 -
KAIST finds molecular lock that traps cells in cancer-like states SEOUL, August 21 (AJP) - A cell that turns cancer-like tends to stay that way long after whatever triggered the change has gone. Researchers in South Korea say they have identified which molecular circuits hold it there and have shown in computer models how to release them. The method is called ROOT, short for Revelation Of the Original circuit of irreversible Transition. It was developed by a team led by Cho Kwang-hyun, a professor in the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and published online Aug. 18 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The university announced the work Friday. Cells constantly change their properties and functions in response to signals from outside. Sometimes the change reverses when the signal stops. Sometimes it does not. Biologists call that second case irreversibility. An ordinary switch springs back when the finger comes off it. Some cellular switches stay on. The molecules that drove the original change keep activating one another after the outside signal has vanished, and the new state holds. That property is not a defect. Cells rely on it to become and remain specialized, which is why a liver cell stays a liver cell. It also drives disease. In epithelial-mesenchymal transition, cells that normally sit fixed in a tissue layer acquire the ability to detach, move and invade what surrounds them. Cancer uses that transition to spread, and once a tumor cell has made it, the cell does not go back. The obstacle has been sorting out which circuits do the holding. A cell's molecular network contains thousands of positive feedback loops, arrangements in which one molecule activates another that in turn reactivates the first. Only some of them lock a cell into a state it cannot leave, and there was no way to tell which. ROOT represents those interactions as a computational logic model and simulates the full arc of a stimulus arriving and then being withdrawn. Circuits that keep the cell in its altered state after withdrawal are flagged. The team calls the resulting set an irreversibility kernel. The team compares the exercise to picking out, from thousands of tangled wires, the few that are actually keeping a door locked. Finding the lock suggested two ways to work on it. The first, resetting control, leaves the cell's capacity for irreversible change intact and returns the individual cell to its earlier state, the equivalent of opening the door without touching the lock. The second, reversing control, removes the source of irreversibility altogether, so the cell can move between states more freely afterward. The researchers ran ROOT on B cell differentiation, epithelial-mesenchymal transition in lung cancer, and the development of enterocytes and beta cells, the intestinal absorptive cells and the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, using data on which genes are switched on in individual cells. In each case the circuits ROOT identified matched regulators already known from earlier laboratory work to govern those transitions. Nothing in the study reversed a cell in a laboratory. The work is computational throughout, tested against networks built from published experimental data, and the applications to cancer and aging that the university describes are prospective rather than demonstrated. What the study offers, KAIST said, is an answer to a question that precedes treatment. Not how to bring a cell back, but why it cannot come back by itself. Kim Jong-wan and Jang Seong-hoon were co-first authors. Lee Jong-hoon and doctoral student Corbin Hopper were co-authors. The work was funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Ministry of Science and ICT, and the Korea Dementia Research Center. "The core of this study is that we identified the circuits that make a cell unable to return once it has changed, and developed a technology that controls them to bring the cell back to its previous state," Cho said. 2026-08-21 14:34:02 -
Viet Nam's Gen Z protests without gathering SEOUL, August 21 (AJP) - The flowers under the tree outside No. 55 Nguyen Huy Tu Street arrived one at a time, which is why the police had nothing to break up. Over roughly a week in August, young Vietnamese walked to the spot in central Hanoi, left a bouquet, photographed it and went home. By the time the pile was large enough to be a problem, no crowd had ever formed. The tree marks the place where a car crossed into oncoming traffic on May 30, 2025, and struck a motorbike carrying a father and his 18-year-old daughter. The teenager, Do Ngoc Phuong Thuy, suffered a severe injury to her right leg and died on June 8, days before her high school graduation examination. Her father, Do Viet Hung, was seriously hurt. Vietnamese newspapers reported the crash once, on May 31, identifying the driver only by his initials, and then stopped. The driver was Nguyen Sy Cuong, 64 at the time, a National Assembly deputy across two terms from 2011 to 2021 and a former deputy chair of the legislature's Foreign Affairs Committee. His wife, Lam Thi Phuong Thanh, was appointed minister of culture, sports and tourism in April. That silence held for more than a year. It broke this month after the culture ministry banned more than a dozen songs by the rapper MCK, which pointed public anger at the minister and, through her, at her husband. By the afternoon of Aug. 12, more than a million posts on Threads had mentioned the case. On Aug. 17, state broadcaster Vietnam Television devoted six minutes of its flagship current affairs program to the crash. In a country where more than 10,000 people die on the roads each year, a traffic case from the previous spring does not normally receive that treatment, and the timing put it two weeks ahead of National Day on Sept. 2. Colonel Nguyen Duc Long, deputy chief of the Hanoi police, said investigators found that Nguyen Sy Cuong had driven in the wrong lane and violated traffic regulations. He tested negative for alcohol and admitted responsibility, Long said, and met the conditions for exemption from criminal liability after the victim's family withdrew its complaint. It was the first official acknowledgment that he was the driver. Do Viet Hung appeared in the broadcast with his face obscured. He thanked people online for their concern and said the family had no complaints about the investigation. The matter, he said, "is now in the past." A spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Security used the same program to accuse "hostile and reactionary forces" of stringing together unrelated incidents to manipulate young people and students. Nothing in the case has been established about the allegation that drove most of the online anger. Users across Threads and Facebook asserted the driver had been drunk. The only official statement on the point is the negative alcohol test, and no evidence has been produced either way. What makes the episode unusual is not the anger but the shape it took. Protesters renamed the tree the justice tree and created a listing for it on Google Maps under the label Cay BMW NSC 30525, which collected more than 230 reviews. They checked in at the location the way people check in at restaurants. They wrote poems. They filed a petition. They generated images of the victim with artificial intelligence and circulated them. After the flowers were cleared on Aug. 14 and plainclothes officers were posted at the site, some young people began tying white ribbons to their backpacks. Every one of those actions is deniable. A person laying a bouquet is not an assembly. A ribbon on a backpack is not a banner. A Google Maps review is not a leaflet. Vietnamese law gives police wide latitude to disperse gatherings and prosecute organizers, and this campaign has produced neither a gathering nor an organizer. The state's response was to clear a place and watch it, because there was no crowd to address. The contrast with the rest of the region is sharp. Youth-led movements have swept South and Southeast Asia over the past two years, and most of them took the street. In Nepal, protests that began on Sept. 8, 2025, over corruption and a social media ban brought down Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli within days and left at least 76 people dead in the first 48 hours, with parliament and the presidential residence burned. Indonesian protesters forced President Prabowo Subianto to cut lawmakers' housing allowances last August after police killed a 21-year-old delivery driver during demonstrations. In the Philippines, tens of thousands turned out over graft in flood control projects. In India, thousands marched on Parliament in New Delhi in July over education reform. The obvious explanation is that Viet Nam is a one-party communist state and the others are not, but that does not survive contact with the facts. Oli led the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), and his government fell in five days. The difference lies in enforcement rather than ideology. Viet Nam has had street protests, and it has taught its young people what follows them. Weekly anti-China demonstrations ran for three months in the summer of 2011 outside the Chinese embassy in Hanoi and the consulate in Ho Chi Minh City before security forces began clearing them in late August and detained 47 people. Mass protests against a proposed cybersecurity law and a special economic zone bill in 2018 ended with organizers in prison, among them Huynh Truong Ca, who served five years. Article 331 of the penal code, which criminalizes infringing on state interests, carries sentences of up to seven years and has been applied to ordinary people for posts about local officials. A generation that watched those outcomes did not conclude that protest was impossible. It concluded that the assembly was the vulnerable part, and removed it. The pressure has not disappeared. Threads users posted screenshots on Aug. 13 showing notices that their posts had been restricted inside Viet Nam at the culture ministry's request, citing local law. Others said their accounts were limited. The petition demanding an investigation continues to collect signatures from outside the country, where it cannot be blocked. At the tree on Nguyen Huy Tu, only scattered petals remain. The plainclothes officers are still there, watching from across the street. 2026-08-21 10:40:24 -
Retirement age fight halts every Hyundai Motor plant in S. Korea SEOUL, August 21 (AJP) - Every production line at South Korea's largest automaker went down Friday morning as workers began their first full-day strike in a decade, a walkout that turns on how long they get to keep their jobs rather than on how much they are paid. Morning-shift members of the Hyundai Motor union, who normally clock in at 6:45 a.m., did not come to work. The afternoon shift that starts at 3:30 p.m. will not report either, leaving plants in Ulsan, Jeonju and Asan without production for 16 hours across the day. The union counted about 39,000 members taking part, office staff included. The full day will bring the union's strike total for the year to 60 hours, and double that in stopped line time. Industry estimates put cumulative losses through Friday at 55,200 vehicles and more than 2.3 trillion won ($1.65 billion) in revenue. Hyundai does not publish its own figures. Pay was not the obstacle. The company put an offer on the table at the 15th bargaining session on July 8 that included a monthly base wage increase of 89,000 won ($64), performance pay worth 350 percent of monthly base pay, a lump sum of 10 million won ($7,174) and 15 shares of company stock. The union turned it down and has since built its campaign around three demands that sit outside the wage package entirely. The largest of the three is the retirement age. South Korean law requires employers to set retirement at 60 or later, and the union wants Hyundai to extend that toward 65, timed so that a departing worker can draw the national pension without a gap. Hyundai already rehires retirees for up to two years, which the union considers a substitute rather than a solution. At Tuesday's session, the company proposed settling the timing of any extension through a supplementary agreement once the National Assembly changes the law, and taking up the reinstatement question at the end of the year. The union rejected both. Hyundai's position is that all three items fall outside this year's wage talks, that there are no grounds to reinstate members who were lawfully dismissed for illegal acts during past union activity, and that politicians have to settle the retirement age before a single company can. The second demand concerns the bonus. Hyundai pays an annual bonus set as a multiple of monthly base pay, currently 750 percent, and the union wants it raised to 800. The union argues that fixed pay, including base wage, makes up only 54.8 percent of what a member takes home, which forces workers into overtime and weekend shifts to hold a living income. It pointed to the company's retained earnings, which are accumulated profits rather than cash on hand, and which grew from 11.4 trillion won ($8.2 billion) in 2007 to 101.3 trillion won ($72.7 billion) as of last year. Talks have gone nowhere since. The two sides met 16 times starting May 6, and Tuesday's session at the Ulsan plant broke up after less than three hours with no date set for the next one. Money Today quoted Lee Jong-chul, the union's branch chairman, as saying the next session would wait until working-level talks produced something better. The last time the union struck this hard was 2016, when it logged 106 hours of strikes and 212 hours of stopped lines. Friday's walkout is not Hyundai's alone. The Korean Metal Workers' Union announced at a press conference Wednesday that roughly 90,000 workers across the auto sector would stop work over two days, with parts makers, subcontractors and Hyundai Motor Group affiliates halting Thursday and assembly plants following Friday. Union officers were due at the group's Yangjae-dong headquarters in Seoul for a rally at 2 p.m. Underneath that action sits a second dispute. An amended trade union law now recognizes that a prime contractor carries employer responsibility toward workers it does not directly employ, but the Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU) says Hyundai and affiliates, including Hyundai Mobis, Hyundai Wia and Hyundai Glovis, have refused to post notice of bargaining demands or to attend. About 80 percent of the 20,000 KMWU members seeking such talks work for Hyundai Motor Group companies, according to Ulsan Journal. The retirement age fight reaches well past the auto industry. South Korea crossed into super-aged status in December 2024, when people 65 and older passed 20 percent of the population, and the country now has one of the world's longest life expectancies alongside one of its lowest birth rates. A worker who leaves at 60 cannot claim the national pension until 63 today, and that threshold rises to 65 by 2033. The National Assembly has been circling the problem for a year. The governing Democratic Party set up a special committee on extending the retirement age in November 2025, the government accepted phased extension in principle in March, and the discussion was then pushed past the June 3 local elections. The committee has been working toward a bill for the regular session that opens next month, built around a staged increase toward 65 starting near the end of the decade. Business groups have argued for rehiring schemes instead, which is the same argument Hyundai made at the bargaining table this week. The union plans to strike for four hours on each of the next two working days, Monday and Tuesday, and will convene its central strike committee on Tuesday to decide whether to go further. Kang Sung-ho, who leads the metal union's Kia branch, made the demographic case at Wednesday's press conference. "About 2,000 workers reach retirement age and leave the floor every year," he said, adding that once the income gap between retirement and the first pension payment is taken into account, extending the retirement age is a task that can no longer be put off. 2026-08-21 09:44:28 -
Kazakhstan to elect first Kurultai under new constitution SEOUL, August 20 (AJP) - Voters in Kazakhstan choose all 145 seats of the Kurultai on Sunday, filling the single-chamber legislature that replaced the country's two houses of parliament and completing an institutional change written into a constitution that took effect seven weeks ago. The Central Election Commission has registered 12,605,788 voters and 545 candidates across seven party lists. Every seat is contested in one nationwide district under closed-list proportional representation, with a threshold of 5 percent of valid votes. Deputies serve five years. This is the first national vote under the new constitutional order, and the first in which every seat in the legislature is filled by election. The old Parliament paired an elected lower house, the Mazhilis, with a Senate of 50 members, 10 of them named by the president. Neither chamber exists now, and the Kurultai has no appointed seats. The new body passes legislation, approves the national budget, oversees the executive and may consider confidence in the government. Its consent is required for presidential nominees to the newly created post of Vice President, to the office of Prime Minister, and to senior positions including the Constitutional Court, the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the Supreme Audit Chamber. The same constitution creates a second new institution alongside it. The Halyk Kenesi, or People's Council, is designated the highest consultative body, and its members are appointed by the president rather than elected. Its 126 seats are split evenly three ways, among ethnocultural associations, major public organizations, and local assemblies and regional public councils. It meets in full session at least once a year, with a standing presidium known as the Toralka working between sessions. Its powers reach into the legislative process. The council may submit draft laws to the Kurultai and may initiate national referendums, which places an unelected body alongside the elected one. It absorbs two institutions now being retired, the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, created in 1995 to represent the country's ethnic groups, and the National Kurultai. Parliament passed the first reading of the constitutional law establishing the council in May, and it has not been seated. Ballots list the seven parties in an order drawn by lot, followed by an option to vote against all of them. Voters mark a single choice and cannot pick individual candidates, because seats won by a party go to the names on its registered list in the order the party set. Only registered parties may nominate, and self-nomination is not allowed. If only one party clears the threshold, the party with the next-highest total also enters the chamber. The name reaches back to the assemblies of the Kazakh Khanate, where khans were raised to power and questions of war, migration and succession were settled collectively by the leading figures of the tribes rather than by a single ruler. The word is Turkic in origin and means gathering or council, and versions of it survive in the names of legislatures and public assemblies from Bashkortostan to Kyrgyzstan. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed applying it to the new parliament in January, at a session of the National Kurultai in Kyzylorda, arguing that the historical weight of the term was worth carrying into a modern institution. That body, a consultative forum he established in 2022 for officials, academics and public figures, shares the name but not the function. The Kyzylorda session was its last. Tokayev first raised the shift to a single chamber in his address to the nation in September 2025, when he proposed putting it to a referendum in 2027 and said the public discussion would take at least a year. He appointed a working group on parliamentary reform in October under State Counselor Erlan Karin. In January he told the Kyzylorda session that the changes had grown extensive enough to amount to a new constitution rather than an amendment, and a Constitutional Commission chaired by Constitutional Court head Elvira Azimova took over the drafting. The text was published Feb. 12 and went to a nationwide referendum on March 15, more than a year ahead of the original date. The CEC put support at 87.15 percent on turnout of 73.12 percent. The constitution entered into force July 1, ending the mandate of the old Parliament, and Tokayev signed the decree calling the election the same day. Adilet holds first place on the ballot and the largest list, with 186 candidates. The party held its founding congress May 7 and was registered by the Justice Ministry on June 1 under Aibek Dadebay, who had stepped down as head of the presidential executive office. Amanat, which took 53.9 percent in 2023 and held the largest bloc in the Mazhilis, voted at its congress June 12 to join Adilet, and Adilet delegates approved the accession two days later. The remaining six lists carry between 33 and 75 candidates. Auyl, an agrarian party, finished second in 2023 with 10.9 percent. Respublica, associated with business, took 8.59 percent and Ak Zhol, which campaigns on market liberalization and stronger parliamentary oversight, took 8.41 percent. The People's Party of Kazakhstan won 6.8 percent and the Nationwide Social Democratic Party 5.2 percent. Baitaq, an environmental party, fell short at 2.3 percent. Adilet did not contest that election, so the two ballots cannot be compared party for party. Of the 545 candidates, 172 are women and 373 are men, with an average age of 45.4 years, according to the CEC. The field includes 74 candidates under 35 and 19 with disabilities. Each party had to reserve at least 30 percent of its list for women, young people and persons with disabilities and must apply the same proportion when distributing the seats it wins. All seven met the list requirement. More than 10,400 polling stations will open across the country, staffed by roughly 71,000 commission members. Another 79 stations will operate at Kazakh diplomatic missions in 61 countries. Voting is in person only, with no postal or online option, and the CEC is printing 12,731,847 ballots in Kazakh and Russian, including a statutory 1 percent reserve. Campaigning began July 23 and ends at midnight on Aug. 21, with Aug. 22 set aside as a day of silence. Publication of opinion polls, forecasts and other election research has been barred since Aug. 18. The CEC had accredited 781 foreign and international observers as of Aug. 17. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has deployed 39 long-term and 208 short-term monitors through its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, which is expected to release initial findings the day after the vote and a full report later. Once results are published, the president has 30 days to convene the first session, and the government surrenders its powers before the incoming chamber. Within two months of that sitting, and only with the Kurultai's consent, Tokayev must appoint a Vice President along with the leadership of the Constitutional Court, the CEC, and the Supreme Audit Chamber. 2026-08-20 20:41:14 -
Kookmin students win grand prize at Korea AI content festival SEOUL, August 20 (AJP) - A music video created by Kookmin University students, depicting a man who tries to break off his relationship with the robots that think for him, then orders another one, has won the top prize in its category at a South Korean competition for work made using artificial intelligence solutions. The film, titled "Epos," was made by five undergraduates in Kookmin University's Department of AI Design working under the team name Holy. It beat 255 other entries in the music video category of the 2026 Korea AI Content Festival, which drew 1,066 submissions across four categories between February and July. Awards were presented Aug. 6 at the Construction Hall in Gangnam, southern Seoul. The team members are Kim Se-hyun, Lee Song-won, Yoon Hee-won, Seong Yeon-woo and Han Ji-woo. The idea came out of their own habits. The students said that after working constantly with generative AI, a class of tools that produce images, video, text and sound on command, they had come to see a clear gap between work that uses AI well and work that leans on it entirely. That gap became the starting point for the film. In "Epos," the protagonist relies on cloned robots that take over one role after another in his life, a figure the team drew for AI itself. He decides to cut them off. He places another order instead. The team said it was not trying to reject AI. What worried them was the possibility that heavy dependence gradually dulls human thinking, judgment and creativity. They ended the film without resolving anything, they said, because whether AI turns out to be a threat or a larger opening depends on how people use it. Seong Yeon-woo, who accepted the award for the team, said the technology was never the point. "The more we work in an era of making things with AI, the more I think the value of a work is decided by what question you ask, what message you put in it and how you direct it," Seong said. The prize, Seong added, appeared to recognize "the process of thinking it through with the team, over and over, for the sake of the message and the planning and the direction." Entries were judged by a panel of working drama directors, heads of AI production companies and university professors, who weighed creativity, story construction, use of AI technology, finish and potential for further use. The festival was organized by Chorokbaem Media, a Seoul production company, to find creators capable of making content with AI and to surface strong examples of it. Submissions were taken in four categories covering advertising, music video, short-form drama and mid-form drama. Kookmin University opened the Department of AI Design in 2022 as the ninth department in its College of Design, with the aim of training designers who can work with data and AI systems rather than simply operate them. The university, which marks 80 years since its founding this year, has grouped design and content alongside AI convergence among eight fields it is concentrating on under a long-term plan called KMU VISION 2035: EDGE. The winning works will be released in stages through Chorokbaem Media's website and official YouTube channel. 2026-08-20 14:15:34 -
US ambassador meets American executives in first Seoul business talks SEOUL, August 20 (AJP) - The new U.S. ambassador to South Korea met senior executives from American companies operating in the country on Thursday, her first group engagement with the U.S. business community since taking up her post three weeks ago. The American Chamber of Commerce in Korea hosted Michelle Steel for a breakfast roundtable at its office in Yeouido, Seoul. The chamber, founded in 1953, says it represents more than 800 member companies and affiliates, making it the largest foreign business organization in South Korea. The American Chamber of Commerce in Korea (AMCHAM) kept the session small and did not release the names of the executives who attended. It said the group covered opportunities and challenges facing American companies here, and how continued contact between the embassy and the chamber could strengthen bilateral trade and investment. "We are delighted to welcome Ambassador Steel for her first official meeting with the U.S. business community in Korea," said AMCHAM chairman and chief executive James Kim. Kim said he had known Steel for years and had already met her at the U.S. Embassy during her first week in Seoul. Her early contact with business leaders, he said, "sends a clear and encouraging message about the importance of American companies to the U.S.-Korea economic partnership." AMCHAM said Steel used the meeting to stress the part American companies play in the economic relationship between the two countries, and told the executives she would work with the chamber to address the difficulties they face and improve the environment they operate in. The chamber did not quote her directly. The two sides also discussed cooperating on Freedom 250, a program marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. AMCHAM held its annual Doing Business in Korea seminar in April as a Freedom 250 edition. Steel arrived in Seoul on July 30, filling a post that had been vacant since Philip Goldberg left in January 2025. President Donald Trump nominated her in April and the Senate confirmed her on June 17. Born in Seoul in 1955, Steel moved to the United States in 1975 and served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives representing California from 2021 to 2025. She is the second Korean American to serve as ambassador to South Korea, after Sung Kim, who held the post from 2011 to 2014. She submitted a copy of her credentials to Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Aug. 4 and presented them to President Lee Jae Myung at the Blue House on Aug. 12. 2026-08-20 11:17:33