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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Pyongyang pledges full expansion of China friendship SEOUL, July 13 (AJP) - North Korean Premier Pak Thae-song has pledged to work with China to expand bilateral relations across all fronts, sending a message of thanks to Chinese Premier Li Qiang after wrapping up a three-day official visit to Beijing, the North's state media reported Monday. The visit, timed to the 65th anniversary of the treaty that binds the two countries in a mutual defense pact, capped a month of unusually rapid diplomatic traffic between Pyongyang and Beijing following Chinese President Xi Jinping's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last month. In the message, sent as he departed China on Sunday, Pak thanked Li for the hospitality extended to his delegation and said he was satisfied with the results of the trip, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). He expressed a willingness to "work together with Chinese comrades to comprehensively expand and develop the traditional DPRK-China relations of friendship and cooperation in line with the demands of the new era," the agency said. Pak led a party and government delegation to China from July 10 to 12 to attend events marking the anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. The pact, signed in Beijing on July 11, 1961 by North Korean founder Kim Il-sung and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, obliges each side to provide military support if the other comes under armed attack, a clause that has made it the bedrock of the relationship for more than six decades. The reception Pak received signaled how much weight Beijing placed on the occasion. He paid a courtesy call on Xi on July 10, held talks with Li the following day, and met Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee and the party's third-ranking official, as well as Cai Qi, a Politburo Standing Committee member ranked fifth in the hierarchy. South Korea's unification ministry said the trip marked the first time in seven years that Pyongyang had dispatched a government delegation to Beijing for a treaty anniversary, and noted that the North raised the rank of its chief delegate to premier from the parliamentary vice chairman it sent in 2019. On the final day of the visit, the delegation toured the Museum of the Communist Party of China and a subway control center in Beijing, after inspecting a green low-carbon circular economy demonstration site run by China Resources Recycling Group in the port city of Tianjin. In the museum's guest book, Pak wrote that he hoped the Chinese people would "continue to achieve new successes in building a modern socialist country under the leadership of the Communist Party of China," KCNA reported. The delegation flew home Sunday, seen off at the airport by Chinese officials including State Council Secretary-General Wu Zhenglong and Wang Yajun, China's ambassador to North Korea. First Vice Premier Kim Tok-hun greeted the delegation on arrival in Pyongyang. The trip built on momentum from Xi's visit to Pyongyang last month, his first since 2019, where the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening strategic communication and expanding cooperation in a summit and joint statement. At those talks, Xi proposed that the two countries grandly commemorate the treaty's 65th anniversary, according to Chinese state media. 2026-07-13 11:02:15 -
KAIST clears power-wasting bottleneck in chips SEOUL, July 13 (AJP) - South Korean researchers have found a way to remove one of the biggest hidden bottlenecks inside computer chips, a discovery that could make future artificial intelligence processors faster and far less power-hungry. Every chip loses energy at the point where metal wiring meets the semiconductor material that does the actual computing. This so-called contact resistance works like a tollgate on a highway: electricity slows down, heat builds up, and power is wasted. The smaller the chips become, the worse the problem gets, which is why the industry regards it as one of the hardest obstacles to building the next generation of processors. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said Monday that a team led by materials science professor Hong Seung-bum, working with KAIST colleague Kang Ki-bum and Sungkyunkwan University professor Cho Sung-beom, had built a chip structure in which electricity flows across that troublesome boundary without any blockage, and observed it happening for the first time at the scale of a nanometer, one billionth of a meter. The trick was to get rid of the boundary altogether. Instead of attaching a metal electrode on top of a semiconductor, as chipmakers have always done, the team used a single sheet of platinum diselenide, a material only one or two atoms thick. Within that one sheet, they created a region that conducts like a metal and a region that behaves like a semiconductor, joined seamlessly with no gap, glue, or residue in between. Because both regions belong to the same continuous material, current passes from one to the other as if driving on an uninterrupted road. Using an atomic force microscope, an instrument that traces surfaces with a needle fine enough to map individual atoms, the researchers watched electric charge cross the junction. The current flowed straight through without stalling or bending, the first direct experimental proof that such a seamless interface does not resist the flow of electricity. The team then went a step further and tested whether the structure could do real work. By applying an electric field to the semiconductor region, they switched the current on and off in a stable way, the basic operation of a transistor, the building block of every processor and memory chip. The practical implications are significant. Contact resistance is a major reason data centers running AI models consume enormous amounts of electricity and generate so much heat. A chip architecture that eliminates the bottleneck could translate into AI processors that run faster on less power, longer battery life in phones and laptops, and ultra-low-power chips for sensors and wearable devices. The technique also gives chip designers a testing platform to evaluate electrode structures before committing them to production. The work remains laboratory science for now, and the team plans to extend the method to other ultrathin materials in the same family before it can move toward commercial use. "This is the first time anyone has directly observed current flowing across a two-dimensional semiconductor interface at the nanometer scale," Hong said. "Since we have experimentally proven that a seamless interface does not obstruct the flow of current, we expect it to serve as a core technology for solving contact resistance problems in a wide range of next-generation semiconductors." KAIST doctoral candidate Kim Yeon-gyu, KAIST researcher Gyeon Min-seung and Sungkyunkwan University doctoral candidate Hong Ji-hoon were co-first authors of the study, which was published in the July 2026 issue of the materials science journal Matter. (Reference Information) Journal/Source: Matter Title: Nanoscale imaging of charge transport across the semimetal-semiconductor interface in monolithic platinum diselenide Link/DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matt.2026.102873 2026-07-13 10:23:02 -
Türkiye rises from failed coup to global bridge SEOUL, July 13 (AJP) - Ten years ago this Wednesday, fighter jets bombed the Turkish parliament and tanks rolled onto the bridge spanning the Bosphorus. The coup attempt of July 15, 2016, was designed to break the Turkish state in a single night. Instead, it collapsed by morning, defeated by ordinary citizens who walked toward the tanks, and the decade that followed turned the country that survived it into one of the few states trusted to stand between the world's warring powers. Türkiye marks the anniversary as Democracy and National Unity Day, with commemorations in all 81 provinces and at diplomatic missions abroad under the theme "The Will Is Ours, Victory Is Ours." In Istanbul, 253 boats will sail the Marmara Sea and a Quran recitation by 253 memorizers will be held at Hagia Sophia, one for each person the state counts among the dead. The main ceremony takes place in the Saraçhane district, where some of the heaviest civilian casualties occurred. What happened that night was rare in the history of coups. Most are settled among elites, and the public learns the outcome on the morning news. In Türkiye, the outcome was decided in the streets. After President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on citizens to resist, speaking by video link on a news anchor's phone, crowds surrounded military units in Istanbul and Ankara. Unarmed men and women climbed onto tanks. Some were shot doing so. At least 251 people were killed and more than 2,000 wounded in a single night, and the coup was finished before dawn. Ankara attributes the attempt to the movement of Fethullah Gülen, a cleric who lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania from 1999 until his death in October 2024. Gülen was once an ally of Erdoğan, and his movement ran schools, media outlets, and businesses in dozens of countries while its followers rose through the Turkish judiciary, police, and military over decades. The two men broke publicly in 2013, and after the coup attempt, the government designated the network a terrorist organization, calling it the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization, or FETÖ. Gülen denied any role until his death. The years that followed brought one of the largest purges in the republic's history, with tens of thousands of soldiers, judges, prosecutors, teachers, and civil servants dismissed or detained, a crackdown whose scale drew criticism from Western governments. But the deeper legacy of July 15 is not the purge. It is what the night proved about the country itself. A state that survives a coup through the will of its own people acquires something most nations never get to test, a certainty about where legitimacy lives. The crowds that filled the squares that night came from across Türkiye's political spectrum, secular and religious, left and right, government supporters and opponents, united on the single point that soldiers do not decide who governs. That unity became strategic capital, and Ankara has spent 10 years converting it into power. The conversion is measurable. Türkiye concluded after 2016 that its security could not be outsourced and built a defense industry that has moved from near dependence on foreign suppliers to ranking among the world's significant arms exporters, with its drones fielded in conflicts from North Africa to Ukraine. It pursued an independent foreign policy that kept channels open to actors its allies refused to touch, absorbing American sanctions over its purchase of Russian air defense systems rather than backing down. The bet was that a nation confident in its own cohesion could afford to stand between blocs rather than inside one. In the disorder of the 2020s, that bet is paying off. Consider the world of July 2026. The war in Ukraine grinds through its fifth year. A war between the United States, Israel, and Iran has shaken the Middle East and rattled energy markets. The transatlantic alliance is strained over burden-sharing as Washington draws down forces in Europe. In this landscape, Türkiye is the only NATO member that talks regularly to both Kyiv and Moscow. It brokered the Black Sea grain deal that moved more than 30 million tons of grain through the blockade, hosted the Istanbul talks that produced prisoner exchanges of 1,000 captives on each side, and has repeatedly offered to host leader-level negotiations. When the Iran war broke out, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan flew between Gulf capitals arguing that the region must own its security, and Ankara positioned itself as a channel between Washington and Tehran. Geography underwrites the diplomacy. Türkiye sits on the strait that separates Europe from Asia and controls, under the Montreux Convention, the only maritime passage into the Black Sea, a power it has used to keep Russian warships from reinforcing their fleet. It anchors the Middle Corridor, the overland trade route linking China and Central Asia to Europe that has grown sharply in importance as the northern route through Russia became untenable. Goods, gas, grain, and refugees all pass through or past Turkish territory. In calm times this makes Türkiye a transit country. In chaotic times it makes Türkiye a gatekeeper, and the times are chaotic. The symbolism of this month made the point plainly. NATO held its summit in Ankara on July 7 and 8, the first ever in the Turkish capital, one week before the coup anniversary. Ten years ago, jets flown by putschists bombed the parliament. This month, leaders of all 32 allied nations gathered a few kilometers away, and US President Donald Trump praised his host and pledged to lift the sanctions imposed over the Russian air defense purchase. The summit's defense industry forum was the largest in the alliance's history, held in a country that a decade earlier was purging its own officer corps. Among the guests was South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, one of only two non-NATO heads of state invited alongside Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His presence was itself evidence of Türkiye's pull. South Korea, a trading nation at the far end of Asia whose prosperity depends on open sea lanes and functioning supply chains, has been investing steadily in the connector country. Lee made a state visit to Ankara last November, the first by a South Korean president in 13 years, marking the 75th anniversary of Türkiye's entry into the Korean War, in which some 21,000 Turkish troops fought and more than 900 died. The two presidents met for 103 minutes, upgraded the strategic partnership through a joint statement, and signed agreements covering nuclear power, veterans affairs, and infrastructure, giving South Korea a foothold in Türkiye's planned second nuclear plant at Sinop. For Seoul, whose defense firms are pushing into European markets, Türkiye is both a partner and a proof of concept, a country that built an arms industry from dependence to global reach within a generation. None of this settles the arguments about Türkiye's internal politics, which remain contested at home and abroad. But the trajectory since July 15 is difficult to dispute. The night that was meant to break the Turkish state instead fused it, and the country that emerged has converted that cohesion into a position no rival can easily replicate, the indispensable middle, holding the door between Europe and Asia at the moment the world needs someone to hold it. On Wednesday night in Saraçhane, where crowds faced gunfire a decade ago, the names of the dead will be read aloud, as they have been every July 15 since 2016. One week earlier and a few hundred kilometers away, the leaders of 32 nations stood on Turkish soil to plan the defense of two continents. The distance between those two gatherings is 10 years, and the same crowds made both possible. 2026-07-13 09:21:20 -
Immigration politics linked to rising factory pollution, KAIST study finds SEOUL, July 10 (AJP) - When immigration dominates political debate, factories quietly release more toxic chemicals. That is the finding of a new study by researchers in South Korea and Singapore, who traced the connection to a simple constraint: governments have only so much money and attention to go around. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said Friday that a research team led by Lee Na-rae, a professor in its School of Business and Technology Management, and Heli Wang of Singapore Management University analyzed immigration-related legislation and environmental data across the United States. They found that as immigration rose on the political agenda, government environmental oversight weakened and toxic emissions from manufacturers increased. The researchers examined 82,377 records from 14,390 manufacturing facilities across the United States between 2010 and 2018, combining the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory with state-level immigration legislation data. Each additional immigration-related bill was associated with an average 1 percent increase in toxic releases per facility, roughly 25 kilograms, or 56 pounds, of additional toxic chemicals per plant. The team calls the mechanism "institutional crowding." When a politically charged issue such as immigration demands government attention and enforcement resources, less visible policy areas like environmental monitoring get pushed aside. Firms, sensing looser oversight, cut back on costly pollution abatement and toxic waste management. The researchers stressed that environmental regulations themselves did not change during the period studied. What changed was how closely anyone was watching. The effect was strongest where money was tightest. In states carrying heavy debt or fiscal burdens, environmental oversight deteriorated further when political attention shifted to new issues, suggesting that cash-strapped governments funnel resources toward whatever is politically urgent first. Although the study used immigration as its test case, the researchers said the mechanism is general. Any issue that consumes government resources, from a public health crisis to a security scare, could crowd out enforcement elsewhere. The findings carry implications for environmental justice, since pollution burdens tend to fall hardest on poorer communities that are least equipped to push back. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said the study offers new grounds for designing safeguards that keep environmental enforcement insulated from political swings. The paper, titled "There's More Than Meets the Eye: Assessing the Impact of Immigrants on Firm Environmental Performance," was published online in the Journal of Management on May 29, with Lee as first author. It has received the POSCO Corporate Citizenship Research Award, the Academy of Management's Robert J. Litschert Award, and a best paper award from the Strategic Management Society. "This study does not argue that immigration causes environmental pollution, but shows that shifts in the political agenda can weaken environmental oversight and increase corporate pollution," Lee said. "Even when the government's limited resources are concentrated on a particular issue, environmental oversight needs institutional protection so that it does not falter." (Reference Information) Journal/Source: Journal of Management Title: There's More Than Meets the Eye: Assessing the Impact of Immigrants on Firm Environmental Performance Link/DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063261442451 2026-07-10 10:35:13 -
Kazakhstan defies regional slowdown in ADB outlook SEOUL, July 10 (AJP) - Kazakhstan's economy is set to keep growing at a steady pace over the next two years even as the Asian Development Bank trims forecasts for much of the surrounding region, according to the bank's Asian Development Outlook released this week. The Asian Development Bank kept its projections for Kazakhstan unchanged in the July edition of the report, with gross domestic product expected to expand 4.8 percent in 2026 and 4.5 percent in 2027. The economy grew 6.5 percent in 2025, lifted by a surge in oil output after the expansion of the Tengiz field, Kazakhstan's largest, came online ahead of schedule. The unchanged outlook stands out in a subregion where the bank lowered several forecasts. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) cut its 2026 projections for Armenia, Turkiye and Turkmenistan, citing Russian trade restrictions, weak first-quarter growth and the higher cost of rerouting trade around Iran. Forecasts for Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were left untouched for both years. The wider region is under strain. The ADB projects developing Asia and the Pacific, a grouping of 43 economies that excludes Japan, South Korea and Singapore, will grow 4.9 percent in 2026, below the 5.1 percent it forecast in April. The bank blamed the conflict in the Middle East, saying it has caused prolonged disruption to energy markets and supply chains, raised production costs and dampened economic activity. Growth is expected to recover to 5.1 percent in 2027. Kazakhstan's expansion is slowing from last year's pace for reasons the bank flagged in April. Oil production is running near capacity after the Tengiz ramp-up, leaving little room for further gains, while tighter lending conditions, higher taxes and slower real income growth are expected to cool private spending. Government investment continues to support activity. Inflation remains the country's main weak spot. The ADB expects consumer prices to rise 10.4 percent in 2026 before easing to 9.5 percent in 2027, down from 11.4 percent in 2025 but still among the highest rates in Central Asia. The bank attributed the pressure partly to government-regulated utility tariff increases and a new tax code that raised value-added tax, prompting businesses and consumers to bring purchases forward. Across the Caucasus and Central and West Asia, the ADB revised its 2026 inflation forecast up to 22.0 percent, a figure driven largely by Turkiye, as the Middle East crisis slows disinflation and pushes fuel prices higher across the subregion. The report warned that the projections carry elevated uncertainty. The main risks to the regional outlook include renewed geopolitical tensions, tighter global financial conditions, higher commodity prices and trade uncertainty, the ADB said. 2026-07-10 10:19:27 -
Foreign language press association marks 11 years in Seoul SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - South Korea's foreign-language newspapers marked 11 years of working under a single banner on Thursday, with their association pledging to expand international exchanges and prepare member outlets for an era reshaped by artificial intelligence. The Foreign Language Newspapers Association of Korea held its 11th anniversary ceremony at the Korea Press Center in central Seoul, drawing guests including Chinese Ambassador Dai Bing, Reform Party floor leader Cheon Ha-ram, Seoul Vice Mayor for Political Affairs Park Chan-gu and James Kim, chairman and chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea. The United States Embassy sent a spokesperson on behalf of the ambassador, who could not attend due to scheduling. Association chairman Yang Kyu-hyun, who also heads Aju Ilbo, addressed the contrast directly in his opening remarks, delivered in Korean. "The fact that both countries value our association and the role of foreign-language media is by no means a small thing," he said. Founded in 2015, the Foreign Language Newspapers Association of Korea (FLNAK) brings together the country's English-language and other foreign-language news outlets, including Aju Ilbo, The Korea Herald, The Korea Times and the Korea JoongAng Daily, whose representatives attended Thursday's ceremony. The group positions its members as a bridge between South Korea and international audiences. Yang said the past 11 years had tested member outlets through the decline of print, the digital transition and shifts in the international order. This year's event was deliberately smaller than last year's 10th anniversary celebration, prepared as a family-like occasion that put substance over scale. "The AI era is both a crisis and a new opportunity for journalism," Yang said. "The value of foreign-language media equipped with accuracy, trust and an international perspective will only grow larger." He said FLNAK would expand international exchanges, develop joint projects among member companies and work to secure policy support. In a congratulatory speech, Dai called China "the biggest victim" of disinformation and urged foreign-language media to report on the country objectively, saying "one important origin of fake news is ideological bias and political manipulation." He said the exchange of state visits between President Lee Jae Myung and Chinese President Xi Jinping had opened "a new chapter" in bilateral relations, and invited journalists to visit China and "tell the story of a real, multi-dimensional, and comprehensive China." Kim said artificial intelligence only reinforced the value of trusted journalism, telling the audience that "technology can generate content, but it cannot replace sound judgment, editorial integrity, or the credibility that professional journalists have built over many years." He noted that of the 14 companies worldwide valued at more than $1 trillion, two are Korean, a sign of South Korea's rising global profile. 2026-07-09 14:34:36 -
S. Korea, Malaysia deepen energy cooperation after Hormuz shock SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - South Korea and Malaysia agreed to strengthen energy security cooperation, from stable liquefied natural gas supplies to potential nuclear power collaboration, as Seoul works to shore up supply lines battered by this year's war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The stakes for South Korea are hard to overstate. The country routes about 70 percent of its crude oil imports through the strait, and the effective blockade that began in late February left 26 South Korean-flagged vessels stranded in the Persian Gulf, sent the KOSPI to its worst single session on record and pushed the won to a 17-year low. Even after Iran and the United States announced a ceasefire on April 8, traffic through the strait has remained far below prewar levels. Malaysia, South Korea's second-largest LNG supplier, ships its gas across sea lanes that bypass the chokepoint entirely, which has turned a longstanding trade relationship into a strategic asset. That backdrop framed the 10th South Korea-Malaysia Policy Consultation, held Wednesday in Seoul between First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo and Amran Mohamed Zin, secretary general of Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Agreeing that disruptions to global energy supply chains have made reliable partners more important than ever, the two sides committed to keeping LNG and petroleum product trade stable and to pursuing strategic cooperation, including on nuclear power, according to South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The relationship runs both ways: South Korea is the second-largest buyer of Malaysia's refined petroleum products. Trade was the other forward-looking item. The two vice ministers said they are working closely toward signing a bilateral free trade agreement within the year, expecting the pact to expand trade and lay the institutional groundwork for cooperation in new industries, including artificial intelligence and digital technology, halal products, green industry and biotechnology. Defense cooperation, meanwhile, keeps producing concrete results. Park pointed to Malaysia's adoption of the FA-50 light combat aircraft in 2023 and its purchase of the Haegung ship-based interceptor missile in April, and the two sides noted that a joint defense industry committee is being pursued this year on the foundation of an existing defense cooperation memorandum. Both deals carry weight beyond their price tags. The FA-50 contract, signed in February 2023 between Malaysia's Ministry of Defence and Korea Aerospace Industries, covers 18 aircraft for about $920 million and ranks among the largest defense acquisitions in Malaysian history. The Korean jet beat out India's Tejas, Pakistan's JF-17, Russia's MiG-35 and Türkiye's Hurjet in the tender, marking the fourth Southeast Asian aircraft sale for Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) after Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. First deliveries are due this year, with the Royal Malaysian Air Force expecting six aircraft by the end of 2026 instead of the four originally planned, and KAI has said a follow-on order for 18 more is likely. The Haegung deal, though smaller at $94 million, was a milestone for South Korea's missile industry. Signed at the Defence Services Asia exhibition in Kuala Lumpur on April 22, it marked the first overseas export of the ship-to-air interceptor, developed from 2011 under the state-run Agency for Defense Development and mass-produced by LIG Nex1, now LIG Defense & Aerospace, since 2019. Designed to shoot down incoming anti-ship missiles and aircraft, Haegung will arm the Royal Malaysian Navy's new littoral mission ships being built by Turkish shipbuilder STM. Park described Malaysia as a longtime friend and strategic partner, and called for cooperation that ordinary citizens in both countries can feel. Amran stressed people-to-people exchange through tourism and education, saying he hopes more South Koreans will visit during Visit Malaysia Year 2026. Travel between the two countries has been growing: about 330,000 Malaysians visited South Korea last year, up from 240,000 in 2023, while about 460,000 South Koreans traveled to Malaysia, according to the Korea Tourism Organization. Park asked for Malaysia's support in concluding a mutual driver's license recognition agreement within the year to make visits easier. The two sides also exchanged views on the Korean Peninsula and regional affairs. Park thanked Malaysia for its cooperation as ASEAN chair last year and asked for continued support in implementing Seoul's vision for a comprehensive strategic partnership with the bloc. Amran expressed support for the South Korean government's policy and efforts for peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula, and the two agreed to maintain close communication for regional peace and stability. 2026-07-09 08:50:11 -
Türkiye emerges stronger from Ankara NATO summit SEOUL, July 09 (AJP) - Türkiye closed out the first North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit ever held in its capital on Wednesday with its standing in the alliance visibly enhanced, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed to progress on F-35 fighter jets, a thaw in relations with Washington and a defense industry that he said now outpaces many allies. "We have successfully concluded our NATO summit, which we hosted in our country for the second time in 22 years and for the first time in our capital, Ankara," Erdogan said at a news conference after the two-day gathering at the Beştepe Presidential Complex. "This historic summit, which we hosted at a time when Euro-Atlantic security is being tested, has been conducted in a manner that will shape our common future." The summit itself produced substantial commitments. Allies pledged 70 billion euros, about $80 billion, in military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine in 2026, and announced more than $50 billion in new procurements at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit Defence Industry Forum, according to the alliance. Members also agreed to a 27 billion euro investment to modernize fuel storage and pipeline infrastructure extending to the eastern flank, while European allies and Canada reported raising core defense spending by more than $139 billion since last year's summit in The Hague, a jump of nearly 20 percent. For the host, however, the most consequential developments came on the sidelines. Erdogan said US President Donald Trump has taken a "positive approach" toward delivering F-35 fighter jets to Türkiye, more than six years after Washington suspended the country from the program over its purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system. Ankara has long argued that the two systems do not conflict and that its suspension violated the program's rules. "Mr. Trump actually has a positive approach toward Türkiye on the F-35 issue. Hopefully, when the F-35s are delivered to Türkiye, the whole world will say, 'America kept its promise,'" Erdogan said. Asked whether Washington had linked a possible F-35 sale to the S-400 issue, Erdogan declined to elaborate. "Keep watching us," he replied. The Turkish president also said US sanctions against Ankara are no longer being enforced. "At the moment, the United States is not applying any sanctions against us. To a large extent, they have been lifted," he said, adding that senior Turkish officials including the defense minister, foreign minister and chief of the general staff had confirmed this firsthand. Momentum extended to Türkiye's flagship domestic aircraft program. Erdogan said Trump expressed support for the sale of F110 jet engines, manufactured by General Electric, to power the KAAN fighter jet, an indigenous program launched in 2016 to reduce reliance on foreign military equipment. The Trump administration has reportedly notified Congress of a proposed engine sale valued at more than $700 million. The two leaders also discussed joint naval construction, including frigates, corvettes and submarines, which Erdogan said Turkish shipyards are fully capable of building. "It was a very, very productive meeting," Erdogan said of his talks with Trump, noting that the US president "left the press conference very happy." He added that Trump responds within 24 hours whenever Ankara reaches out. Erdogan framed the warming ties as recognition of the capabilities Türkiye built largely on its own. He said the country never enjoyed the post-Cold War peace dividend that many European states did, instead contending with regional crises and terrorism for decades. "There were times when we were left alone and treated unfairly. Therefore, we often had to rely on our own capabilities," he said. "Today, in terms of defense spending, military capabilities and the defense industry that underpins them, we are well ahead of many allies." The numbers back up an expanding role. Türkiye commands NATO's second-largest land army and has anchored the alliance's southeastern flank for decades. Turkish F-16s will deploy to Estonia in August as part of NATO's Air Policing mission, Ankara will lead the Kosovo Force until September 2026 and the country is scheduled to command the NATO Response Force in 2028 and 2029. Addressing alliance leaders, Erdogan said Türkiye has taken steps to raise defense spending to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product before 2030 and ranks among the world's top 10 countries in defense production and export capacity, according to the Embassy of Türkiye in Seoul. He singled out drone maker Baykar as proof of that rise. "They are receiving very serious orders from around the world and continue to do so. This shows that our unmanned aerial vehicles and armed drones have found acceptance globally," Erdogan said. He also promoted the Steel Dome, Türkiye's integrated air defense project, saying it strengthens both national and alliance defenses. "If others have different domes, we also have the Steel Dome," he said. Erdogan pressed allies to remove what he called lingering barriers to defense trade within the alliance. "Although some obstacles to defense industry trade among allies have decreased, they still exist. These restrictions must be removed as soon as possible, without conditions," he said. In his address to alliance leaders, he warned that excluding non-European Union allies from European defense cooperation would create an artificial division within Europe, and at his press conference, he repeated that EU defense initiatives must complement NATO rather than duplicate it. He brushed aside criticism of a potential F-35 sale from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. "A country can buy and sell defense equipment. Türkiye is already producing these systems, and alongside producing them, it also has the right to buy them," he said. On Greece, however, he struck a conciliatory note, welcoming Mitsotakis' expressed desire to resolve maritime disputes in the Aegean Sea. "Let us sit down, talk and resolve the issue," he said. On Ukraine, Erdogan said the war has become one of attrition, "claiming tens of thousands of casualties every month," and renewed Türkiye's offer to host negotiations, having brokered earlier rounds of talks between Moscow and Kyiv in Istanbul. "There are no losers in a just peace. I would like to reiterate that we are ready to bring the parties together once again in Türkiye," he said. He also expressed support for Trump's vision for peace in Ukraine, according to the embassy. He said he repeatedly pushed Gaza onto the summit agenda, citing more than 73,000 Palestinian deaths, and pointed to nearly 5,000 deaths in Lebanon since March 2 from continuing Israeli attacks. "Our region can tolerate neither new tensions nor new conflicts. On the contrary, like air and water, humanity needs peace, tranquility and stability," he said. Türkiye stands ready to contribute to clearing mines in the Strait of Hormuz, he told alliance leaders. Erdogan met Trump as well as the leaders of Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom on the summit's sidelines, and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa was also in Ankara. He said he would keep pressing European leaders on Türkiye's EU accession, telling German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that "making Türkiye wait for 53 years is an injustice." Türkiye will host two more major international gatherings this year: the 13th Summit of the Organization of Turkic States in Ankara on Oct. 29 and 30, and the COP31 United Nations climate summit in Antalya from Nov. 9 to 20. 2026-07-09 08:24:58 -
KAIST builds stretchable display that expands without image distortion SEOUL, July 08 (AJP) - South Korean researchers have developed a stretchable display platform that expands evenly in every direction when pulled, keeping text and images in their original proportions instead of squashing them, a problem that has held back screens designed to stretch like rubber. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said Wednesday that a team led by Yoo Seung-hyup, a professor in its School of Electrical Engineering, developed the platform jointly with Moon Han-ul's team at Dong-A University in Busan. The work was published in the journal Nature Communications on June 10. Display makers have already moved screens from flat panels to foldable and rollable forms, and stretchable displays are widely seen as the next step. Samsung Display and LG Display have both shown stretchable prototypes in recent years. The obstacle is physical. The rubbery substrates that give a screen its stretch behave like any elastic sheet, narrowing in one direction when pulled in the other, so a stretched map or photograph ends up flattened and distorted. Engineers have tried to fix this with auxetic structures, mechanical frameworks that do the opposite of ordinary materials by growing wider as they are pulled longer. But bonding an auxetic frame across the entire surface of an elastic substrate created a new problem. The frame's individual cells rotate as they expand, and that twisting is transferred directly into the substrate, so while the screen's overall proportions are held, the letters and pictures inside it still warp. KAIST and Dong-A team's answer was to stop gluing the two layers together everywhere. Instead, the researchers calculated the specific points where the auxetic frame should connect to the substrate and bonded only there. With the connection sites chosen correctly, every region of the screen moves outward evenly from its own position, so the display expands uniformly from the smallest patch of pixels to the full panel. The team also introduced a way to measure the problem it was solving. Stretchable displays have typically been judged on how far they stretch and whether their circuits survive, not on how faithfully the image holds its shape. The researchers defined a statistical metric, the isotropic expansion factor, that scores how closely a stretched screen matches ideal uniform expansion, and used it to compare designs and find the least distorting configuration. To test the platform, the researchers printed text and images on substrates and stretched them repeatedly in both directions. Patterns on conventional substrates deformed in places, while those on the new platform held their shape. The team then built a working display by mounting an array of LEDs on the platform. The screen stretched 15 percent in each direction while current kept flowing and brightness held steady, and after repeated stretching cycles, brightness dropped by less than 2 percent. "For stretchable displays to be used as actual information display devices, they must not only stretch well but also preserve on-screen information accurately during stretching," Yoo said. "This platform enables uniform expansion from small areas of the screen to the entire display, and will serve as a key foundational technology for accelerating the commercialization of high-quality stretchable displays." The researchers said the design could eventually reach wearable devices, electronic skin, medical biosensor patches, soft robots and curved displays for cars and aircraft, applications where a screen must deform without garbling the information it shows. Commercialization will depend less on the display elements themselves than on manufacturing, they said, including processes for producing large auxetic frames uniformly, aligning and bonding them precisely to elastic substrates, and proving the connection points survive repeated pulling and touching. KAIST researchers Kim Su-bon and Kim Jun-ho led the study as co-first authors, with Yoo and Moon serving as co-corresponding authors. (Reference Information) Journal/Source: Nature Communications Title: Hybrid auxetic metamaterial platforms enabling multiscale isotropic expansion for distortion-free stretchable displays Link/DOI: https://bit.ly/4pbo4jB 2026-07-08 10:31:56 -
South Korea, U.S., and Japan Form Alliance for Small Modular Reactor Exports South Korea, the United States, and Japan have joined forces to export small modular reactors (SMRs). The three countries, which have previously competed in nuclear power bids, are now collaborating to target the world's fastest-growing energy market.On July 7, during the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi signed a memorandum of cooperation (MOC) to enhance trilateral collaboration. The agreement focuses on deploying SMRs in third countries, starting with the Indo-Pacific region. According to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. will invest over $10 million in a program to technically support the introduction of nuclear power in Indo-Pacific nations.From the perspective of South Korea's nuclear industry, this agreement formalizes a trend that has been developing for months. Instead of competing directly with U.S. reactor design capabilities and Japan's industrial strengths, the countries will share roles.What makes SMRs so appealing to these nations? SMRs are smaller reactors that produce significantly less electricity than traditional large reactors, typically generating 300 megawatts or less compared to over 1,000 megawatts for larger plants. Developers argue that because SMR components can be manufactured in factories and assembled on-site, they can reduce construction time and initial costs. This contrasts with the frequent cost overruns that have plagued large nuclear projects in the West. However, the commercial viability of SMRs has yet to be proven, as no SMRs are currently operational in the West, with the first unit under construction in Canada.The strategic potential of this incomplete technology has been enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI). AI models require massive data centers that consume electricity around the clock. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that global data center electricity consumption will nearly double from 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 950 terawatt-hours by 2030, accounting for about 3% of total global electricity demand. A single large AI data center consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households. Meeting this continuous demand solely with wind and solar energy is challenging, and new gas power plants often face years of delays in connecting to the grid. This is why nuclear power, particularly SMRs that can be located next to data centers, is gaining attention.Big tech companies are already taking action. Google signed its first commercial SMR power purchase agreement with U.S. developer Kairos Power in October 2024, while Amazon and Microsoft are also investing in nuclear power. According to the IEA, the size of conditional power purchase agreements between data center operators and SMR projects has expanded from 25 gigawatts at the end of 2024 to 45 gigawatts currently. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol stated, "Without energy, there is no AI," emphasizing that countries providing stable and affordable electricity will lead the way.The Ankara agreement aims for the three countries to jointly pursue this market. The South Korean Foreign Ministry stated that this cooperative framework seeks to reduce business development risks, achieve economies of scale, attract private investment, streamline licensing, and optimize supply chains. Partner countries will be required to meet high standards for nuclear safety and non-proliferation. Although not explicitly stated, the agreement is clearly aimed at countering Russia's Rosatom and China's state-owned nuclear companies, which have dominated nuclear exports to developing countries.The strengths of the three countries do not overlap. The U.S. leads in reactor design, Japan contributes through joint ventures like GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, and South Korea has a supply chain centered around Doosan Enerbility, which has completed the Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates and supplies components and modules to U.S. SMR developers like NuScale Power.Industrial cooperation is already visible. Alongside the ministerial signing, the U.S. State Department announced an industry initiative involving GE Vernova, Hitachi, Samsung C&T, and SGE to deploy the SMR 'BWRX-300' across Europe. Samsung C&T, a construction subsidiary of the Samsung Group, formed a strategic alliance with GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy in October 2022 to jointly build this 300-megawatt reactor in global markets outside North America. Last week, this collaboration expanded further, with Polish developer SGE announcing plans to build 14 BWRX-300 units at three sites in the UK, with a project value of approximately $47 billion.This cooperative framework is particularly noteworthy given the intense competition that has existed. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power has been embroiled in a nearly decade-long intellectual property dispute with U.S. firm Westinghouse. The contention centered on the technology roots of South Korea's flagship export reactor, the APR1400, casting a shadow over South Korea's export efforts. The two sides reached a comprehensive agreement in January 2025, but the terms were challenging. According to the Korea Herald, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power agreed to purchase $650 million worth of equipment and services from Westinghouse for each reactor exported and pay $175 million in royalties, with bidding restrictions in place for the European Union, the UK, Japan, and Ukraine, excluding North America and the Czech Republic. This 50-year agreement also grants Westinghouse the right to verify the technological independence of South Korean companies before they bid on overseas projects, including SMRs.As a result of this agreement, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power secured a contract for two large reactors in the Czech Republic worth $18.6 billion in June 2025, marking its first overseas nuclear project since 2009. However, the deal faced criticism domestically for being overly concessionary. The trilateral framework now offers a different calculation. If South Korea, the U.S., and Japan bid as a team instead of competing against each other, the burdens of licensing restrictions that have constrained South Korea's solo bids would lessen, making a combined proposal more appealing to potential buyers.Meanwhile, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power is pursuing an independent path. It is developing its own design, the Innovative SMR (i-SMR), with the goal of obtaining standard design approval by the late 2020s. If successful, this would add another technological asset for South Korea to present in consortium bids.During the signing ceremony, Secretary Rubio linked the agreement to energy security, citing instability in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for Middle Eastern oil. He stated that the agreement would enable the three countries to advance their joint work on SMRs, calling the technology "the future of energy production in many ways." Minister Park noted that SMRs represent one of several areas where the three countries can collectively address common challenges.The first BWRX-300 is under construction at the Darlington site in Ontario, Canada, with a target completion date in the late 2020s. 2026-07-08 09:16:00