AJU PRESS ASIA FIRST NEWS AGENCY

Journalist

Park Sae-jin
Park Sae-jin박세진
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
  • Seoul, Washington, Tokyo forge SMR export alliance
    Seoul, Washington, Tokyo forge SMR export alliance SEOUL, July 08 (AJP) - South Korea, the United States and Japan signed an agreement on Tuesday to jointly export small modular reactors, turning three countries that have long competed for the same nuclear contracts into a coordinated bloc aimed at the fastest-growing corner of the global energy market. South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday that Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Japanese Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu signed the memorandum of cooperation (MOC) on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye. The framework targets reactor deployments in third countries, starting with the Indo-Pacific region, and Washington is backing it with more than $10 million in new funding for a State Department program that provides technical support to Indo-Pacific countries adopting nuclear power, according to the department. For South Korea's nuclear industry, the deal formalizes something that has been taking shape for months, a division of labor with American reactor designers and Japanese industrial partners rather than a head-to-head fight against them. Small modular reactors are nuclear plants shrunk to a fraction of conventional size, typically generating up to 300 megawatts compared with more than 1,000 megawatts for a standard large reactor. Their components are built in factories and assembled on site, which developers say cuts construction time and the enormous upfront cost that has stalled large nuclear projects across the West. The technology remains largely unproven commercially. No small modular reactor is yet operating in a Western country, though the first is under construction in Canada. What has transformed the sector from a niche engineering project into a strategic priority is artificial intelligence. Training and running AI models require vast server farms that draw power around the clock, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that electricity consumption by data centers will roughly double from 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 950 terawatt-hours in 2030, around three percent of global electricity demand. A single hyperscale AI data center can consume as much electricity as 100,000 homes. Wind and solar energy sources cannot supply that load alone because it never stops, and grid connections for new gas plants now face multi-year waits. Nuclear power, which runs continuously and emits no carbon, fits the profile, and small reactors can be placed near the data centers themselves. Technology companies have moved first. Google signed the first commercial SMR power purchase agreement with the American developer Kairos Power in October 2024, and Amazon and Microsoft have made their own nuclear commitments. The pipeline of conditional power purchase agreements between data center operators and small modular reactor projects has grown from 25 gigawatts at the end of 2024 to 45 gigawatts today, according to the International Energy Agency. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol has said "there is no AI without energy" and that countries providing secure, affordable electricity will hold the advantage. The Ankara agreement is designed to capture that market as a bloc. According to South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the framework aims to reduce project development risk, achieve economies of scale, attract private investment, streamline licensing and optimize supply chains, while holding partner countries to the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation. The unstated competitors are Russia's Rosatom and China's state nuclear companies, which have dominated reactor exports to developing countries by bundling state financing with construction. The three allies bring complementary pieces. American firms lead in reactor design, Japanese conglomerates supply heavy components and reactor technology through ventures such as GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy, and South Korean companies bring a construction record that delivered the United Arab Emirates' Barakah plant and a domestic supply chain anchored by Doosan Enerbility, which manufactures forgings and modules for American SMR developers including NuScale Power. The industrial side of the arrangement is already visible. Alongside the ministers' signing, the State Department announced an industry initiative among GE Vernova, Hitachi, Samsung C&T and SGE to deploy the BWRX-300 small modular reactor across Europe. Samsung C&T, the construction arm of the Samsung group, formed a strategic alliance with GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy in October 2025 to deploy the 300-megawatt reactor in global markets outside North America. Last week that partnership widened again when SGE, a Polish-led developer, unveiled plans for 14 BWRX-300 reactors across three sites in the United Kingdom with a team including Samsung C&T and Google Cloud, a project worth about $47 billion. The cooperative turn follows years of costly rivalry. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power spent much of the past decade locked in an intellectual property dispute with Westinghouse Electric Company, the American firm whose technology underpins South Korea's flagship APR1400 reactor. The fight shadowed Seoul's export campaigns until the two sides reached a global settlement in January 2025. The terms were steep. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) agreed to purchase $650 million in Westinghouse goods and services and pay $175 million in licensing fees for each reactor it exports, and accepted restrictions on bidding in North America, most of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Ukraine, according to the Korea Herald. The 50-year deal also gives Westinghouse the right to verify the technical independence of South Korean companies before they bid on overseas projects, including small modular reactors. That settlement cleared the way for KHNP to sign its $18.6 billion contract in June 2025 to build two large reactors in the Czech Republic, South Korea's first overseas nuclear plant order since 2009, but it also drew fierce domestic criticism as a lopsided concession. The new trilateral framework offers a different logic. If South Korean, American and Japanese firms bid together rather than against each other, the licensing restrictions that hem in solo Korean bids matter less, and the combined offer becomes harder for customers to refuse. KHNP is meanwhile developing its own domestic design, the i-SMR, with a target of completing standard design approval in the late 2020s, giving South Korea a technology of its own to feed into future consortium bids. At the signing ceremony, Rubio tied the agreement directly to energy security, pointing to instability around the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping chokepoint for Middle Eastern oil. He said the deal allows the three countries to move forward on joint work on small modular reactors, calling the technology "in many ways the future of energy generation." Cho said the SMR sector is one of many areas where the three countries can work together on shared challenges. The first BWRX-300 is under construction at Ontario Power Generation's Darlington site in Canada, with completion expected by the end of the decade. 2026-07-08 08:36:38
  • Kazakhstan tightens grip on flagship gas projects
    Kazakhstan tightens grip on flagship gas projects SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - Kazakhstan has placed construction work at its three largest gas processing projects under weekly government monitoring, a step aimed at keeping the flagship developments on schedule as the country races to meet surging domestic demand and expand its role as a Eurasian energy supplier, the state news agency Qazinform reported Tuesday. The projects under watch sit at the heart of Kazakhstan's plan to lift marketable gas output to 34.6 billion cubic meters by 2030. Two plants at the giant Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea will process one billion and 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year, a facility at the Karachaganak field in the northwest will handle four billion cubic meters, and a plant in the western city of Zhanaozen will add 900 million cubic meters, according to Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry. QazaqGaz, the national gas company, has estimated the cost of the two Kashagan plants alone at up to $3.5 billion, and is building them jointly with UCC Holding of Qatar. Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov issued the monitoring order at a government meeting on Tuesday, instructing the Energy Ministry, the Samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth fund and QazaqGaz to track construction and installation work at the three sites every week. He tied the projects directly to Kazakhstan's energy security, its appeal to foreign investors and the quality of life of its citizens. "Economic growth is accompanied by steadily increasing demand for gas from both households and the industrial sector," Bektenov said. "We must ensure a long-term balance between the industry's resource capacity and the needs of the economy. Projects to expand gas transportation infrastructure, build gas processing plants, and extend gasification across the regions are being implemented consistently." The new plants are expected to increase commercial gas supplies for the domestic market and feed Kazakhstan's push into petrochemicals, an industry the government sees as a way to earn more from its hydrocarbons than raw exports allow. "These facilities are expected to increase commercial gas production for the domestic market and serve as key drivers of the petrochemical industry's development," Bektenov said, adding that gas infrastructure must be delivered on time to support new enterprises and strengthen the country's industrial base. The monitoring order reflects a broader campaign by Astana to turn its geography and resources into leverage. Kazakhstan, the largest economy in Central Asia, has invested heavily in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, known as the Middle Corridor, which carries goods and energy from Central Asia across the Caspian Sea and through the South Caucasus to Europe without passing through Russia. The route drew fresh attention in May when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visiting Astana, called it the present-day equivalent of the Silk Road and said Turkiye wanted to carry larger volumes of Kazakh oil to world markets, as KazMunayGas and Turkish state energy company TPAO signed agreements on joint oil and gas projects. The energy leg of that strategy is already moving. Kazakhstan is expanding its Caspian port of Aktau and plans to ship 2.2 million tons of oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline this year, while its parliament in March approved a green energy corridor with Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan that would send renewable electricity to Europe through cables laid on the Caspian seabed. At home, the government has paired export ambitions with a drive to connect more of its own people to gas. Gasification reached 62.4 percent of the population by the end of 2024, covering 12.6 million citizens, and the government has set a target of 12.8 million people this year, backed by 112.5 billion tenge in funding from the state budget and Samruk-Kazyna for 84 projects. Kazakhstan produced 59 billion cubic meters of gas in 2024 and plans to raise annual production to 74 billion cubic meters by 2030. 2026-07-07 19:28:04
  • Hormuz oil shock splits Asian industry in two
    Hormuz oil shock splits Asian industry in two SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - South Korea's factories just lived through the most violent oil shock in history, and the strange part is that the country posted record exports while it happened. The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway carrying about a fifth of the world's oil, did not hit Asian industry evenly in the first half of 2026. It split it. Semiconductors sailed through on artificial intelligence demand, automobiles took a glancing blow, and petrochemicals, the industry most directly chained to crude oil, came close to breaking. The numbers tell the story of a two-track economy. South Korea's exports hit a record $87.75 billion in May, up 53.2 percent from a year earlier, driven almost entirely by semiconductor shipments that soared 169.4 percent to $37.16 billion, according to trade data. In the same month, auto exports fell 5.9 percent, and the country's petrochemical crackers were running at minimum rates after a wave of force majeure declarations, the legal notices companies issue when events beyond their control make it impossible to honor contracts. How the same shock produced such different outcomes comes down to what each industry actually consumes, and the first half of this year amounted to a live experiment nobody wanted to run. The largest disruption in history The experiment began on Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel launched an air war against Iran. Tehran retaliated by effectively sealing the Strait of Hormuz with missile attacks, ship boardings, and sea mines. Tanker traffic collapsed. Brent crude rose about 65 percent in March alone, roughly $46 a barrel, the largest monthly gain ever recorded, before peaking above $188 in late April. Fatih Birol, who heads the International Energy Agency, called it the "largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market." Global oil supply plummeted by 10.1 million barrels per day in March to 97 million, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). For Asia, which took delivery of nearly 70 percent of the crude passing through the strait before the war, the pipeline to its industrial base had been cut. Petrochemicals take the direct hit Nowhere did that cut land harder than on petrochemicals, the industry that turns oil into the plastics, fibers, and chemicals inside nearly everything manufactured. Asian crackers, the giant plants that break down oil-derived feedstock into building blocks like ethylene, depend on the Middle East for 70 to 80 percent of their naphtha, and roughly 80 percent of Asia's seaborne naphtha imports came from the Gulf in 2025, according to data from the price reporting agency Independent Commodity Intelligence Services. When the strait closed, naphtha prices jumped from $776 per metric ton on March 6 to more than $1,000 within a week, according to Masanori Kawakami, a petrochemical industry expert based in Japan who spoke to Chemical and Engineering News. By mid-March, Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS) had counted 31 force majeure or sales allocation announcements across Asia and the Middle East. Roughly half of global polyethylene capacity was either offline or constrained by feedstock shortages at the peak and polyethylene prices surged 50 to 80 percent in some markets within three weeks, according to assessments cited by BIC Advisory Group. South Korea, which imports around 70 percent of its crude oil and half of its naphtha through the strait, watched its chemical sector buckle plant by plant. Yeochun NCC declared force majeure. LG Chem shut its No. 2 cracker at Yeosu and cut all of its naphtha-fed crackers to 60 percent minimum operating rates. The government responded by restricting naphtha exports and temporarily designating the feedstock a supply-chain security item, while officials discussed importing Russian crude and naphtha to stabilize supply, according to Reuters. The damage was regional, not just Korean. Mitsubishi Chemical cut ethylene output at its Kashima and Mizushima plants in Japan, a country that imports more than 60 percent of its naphtha, about 70 percent of it from the Middle East. A Shell joint venture cracker in Huizhou, China, shut down and suspended polyethylene shipments indefinitely. Formosa Petrochemical declared force majeure in Taiwan and ran its Mailiao crackers at around 70 percent. The IEA's April Oil Market Report found that petrochemical feedstocks showed the most immediate effects of the war of any product category, with LPG and naphtha demand falling 8 and 9 percent year on year in April, against declines of about one percent for transport fuels. The pain mattered more because South Korea's petrochemical industry entered the war already wounded, squeezed for years by Chinese overcapacity and thin margins. The feedstock shock did not create the crisis. It accelerated one that was already underway. Chips sail through on AI demand Semiconductors lived in a different world entirely. Chips are made from silicon, not oil, and the AI investment boom proved far stronger than any energy headwind. South Korean semiconductor exports reached $31.9 billion in April, up 173.5 percent from a year earlier and the highest figure ever recorded for that month, before setting the all-time record in May. The IEA itself noted that South Korea's economy remained resilient through the turmoil, buoyed by chip shipments that exceeded $30 billion for the first time in March. That is not to say chips were untouched. Fabs consume enormous amounts of electricity, and energy costs rose across the board. Statistics Korea reported that semiconductor production fell 10 percent month on month in May, but officials attributed the drop to production capacity reaching its limits and to shipment timing, not to the oil shock, and forecast a recovery in the second half as new fabs come online. The distinction matters: the one industry that stumbled statistically did so because it was running too hot, not because the war starved it. Autos caught in the crossfire Automobiles landed in between, hit hard enough to hurt but through so many channels at once that the oil shock is difficult to isolate. South Korean auto exports fell 5.5 percent in April and 5.9 percent in May, declines that trade data attributed partly to wartime shipping disruptions and partly to Korean carmakers shifting production to the United States in response to Washington's tariff policy. Hyundai Motor temporarily halted production of its Ray and Morning models in late March, though the immediate trigger was a fire at a parts factory in Daejeon that collided with the broader supply chain chaos, according to the Seoul Economic Daily. Domestic passenger car sales fell 3.4 percent in May as fuel prices climbed. There was also a quieter, second-order threat to the auto industry's future. Synthetic graphite, the material used in electric vehicle battery anodes, is made from petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining, and the World Economic Forum warned in April that refiners chasing high-value fuels during the price rally could tighten the supply on which battery production depends. The stress spread well beyond the three sectors. GS Caltex cut its daily crude refining volume from 800,000 barrels to 675,000, according to the Seoul Economic Daily. Airlines including Air Premia and Aero K suspended routes as jet fuel costs soared. The government rolled out a 26.2 trillion won extra budget, about $17 billion, to cushion the shock, and President Lee Jae-myung launched a public energy-saving campaign. A market that will not go back The acute phase has now passed. A fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran took hold in April, and after weeks of contradictory claims about whether the strait was open, tanker traffic has partially resumed. Brent crude was trading at $72.45 per barrel on June 29, near pre-war levels and down from the wartime high above $188. The World Bank expects Brent to average $86 this year, assuming Middle East exports recover to near pre-war levels by the fourth quarter. But the market that South Korean industry now buys from is not the one it knew in January. Global inventories were drawn down sharply during the crisis, and importers across Asia are expected to rebuild stocks at a higher cost. Insurance premiums for Gulf transits remain elevated, mine risk lingers, and Tehran is pressing to convert its demonstrated leverage over the strait into lasting control over who passes through it, including a possible toll system. According to CNBC's report citing Nikos Petrakakos, managing director of investments at the shipping investor Tufton Investment Management, on June 29, shipping traffic through the strait remains nowhere near pre-war levels, and Iran's new position is unlikely to be surrendered. "I don't see Iran going back to where it was before," he said. 2026-07-07 13:44:22
  • Korea-India Future Association to Host Economic Cooperation Forum on July 21
    Korea-India Future Association to Host Economic Cooperation Forum on July 21 Follow-up to President Lee Jae-myung's visit to India; discussion on cooperation and investment strategiesOpen to all interested in Indian business, investors, and the general publicThe Korea-India Future Association, led by Shin Bong-gil, will hold a special lecture on July 21 at the Seoul Club, featuring Lee Seong-ho, the South Korean Ambassador to India, and Cho Chung-jae, head of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP) Delhi office. The topic will be 'Korea-India Economic Cooperation and Investment Prospects.'This event follows President Lee Jae-myung's state visit to India in April and his summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during which the two countries reaffirmed their 'special strategic partnership' for the next decade. They also agreed to resume negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and expand cooperation in strategic industries such as shipbuilding, AI, defense, and arms.Ambassador Lee Seong-ho will discuss 'The Current Situation in India and Korea-India Economic Cooperation,' providing insights into India's political and economic environment and the direction for expanding bilateral cooperation.Ambassador Lee, a seasoned diplomat with experience as the Economic Diplomacy Coordinator and head of the Economic Security Task Force at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was appointed as the South Korean Ambassador to India in October 2024 after serving as Ambassador to Italy in 2022.Following this, Cho Chung-jae will present on 'The Current Status and Outlook of Korean Investment in India,' covering the local investment environment, opportunities in key industries, and strategies for corporate entry.The Korea-India Future Association stated, "This will be a meaningful opportunity to hear directly about practical economic cooperation and ways to expand corporate entry following the summit. We welcome not only our members but also entrepreneurs, startups, researchers, and students interested in the Indian market and business to attend."The event will take place on July 21 from 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM at the Hall of Hallasan, Seoul Club in Jangchung-dong. 2026-07-07 10:20:00
  • KAIST turns temperature into DNA synthesis tool
    KAIST turns temperature into DNA synthesis tool SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - Korean researchers have developed a way to build custom DNA strands using only changes in temperature, removing the chemical reagents and costly equipment that DNA synthesis has long required and potentially lowering the cost of work across drug development, diagnostics and synthetic biology. According to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) on Tuesday, the research team, led by the institute's Choi Yeong-jae, used the chemical reagent-free method to build a battery-free device called a "DNA temperature black box," which records the temperature history of a shipment without any power source. The work was carried out with ATG Lifetech and a team led by Ewha Womans University's Choi Han-sol. Conventional DNA synthesis builds a strand one base at a time, adding and then washing away chemical reagents at every step to link the four building blocks known as A, T, G and C. The process depends on automated synthesizers that can cost hundreds of millions of won and on dedicated laboratory facilities, a barrier that has kept custom DNA out of reach for many smaller labs and devices. The new approach, which the researchers named the Temperature Mediated Primer Exchange Reaction, or TEMPER, replaces that reagent swapping with heat. The team engineered hairpin DNA, folded molecules that spring open only within a set temperature range. By placing several types of hairpin, each tuned to a different temperature, into a single tube and then shifting the temperature in sequence, the researchers assembled a target DNA strand step by step without exchanging any solution. The significance, the team says, is that it changes the method of DNA synthesis itself, handing the control that chemical reagents once exercised over to temperature, a variable that is simple to adjust with standard equipment. The researchers describe it as the world's first platform to synthesize arbitrary DNA sequences through temperature alone. To show the technology could be put to use, the team demonstrated three applications in the paper: a writer for storing digital data in DNA, a color-changing temperature indicator, and the battery-free temperature logger. The DNA temperature black box is stored freeze-dried and begins working when a single drop of water is added. From that point it records when, by how much and in what order the temperature changed, writing that history directly into a DNA sequence. It also changes color once it crosses a set threshold, allowing a spoiled shipment to be spotted by eye. The team expects such a device to help monitor vaccines, biologic drugs, cell therapies and fresh food, where cold-chain handling determines quality. "This study is a world-first foundational technology that presents a new principle, that DNA can be synthesized using temperature alone rather than chemical reagents," Choi said in the announcement, in remarks translated from Korean. He said he expected the method to make DNA synthesis easier and cheaper, lowering the barrier to basic bioscience research and opening new industrial uses such as the battery-free black box. The study was published in Nature Communications on July 2. KAIST's Choi Jang-ho and GIST doctoral student Kim Jin-ho were co-first authors, with Choi Yeong-jae and Choi Han-sol as corresponding authors. (Reference Information) Journal/Source: Nature Communications Title: Programmable one-pot polymerase-mediated DNA synthesis via temperature control Link/DOI: https://bit.ly/4aAr8zY 2026-07-07 10:08:23
  • Kazakhstan Celebrates Capital Day Amid New Constitution Implementation
    Kazakhstan Celebrates Capital Day Amid New Constitution Implementation Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered a congratulatory message to the public on July 6, coinciding with 'Capital Day,' emphasizing the significance of the new constitution that took effect on July 1. The new constitution is regarded as the most significant overhaul of Kazakhstan's political system since independence. The new constitution, referred to as the 'People's Constitution' by President Tokayev, was approved in a national referendum on March 15, with a turnout of approximately 73 percent and 87.15 percent in favor, according to the Central Referendum Commission of Kazakhstan. It replaces the 1995 constitution, abolishes the bicameral parliament, and establishes a 145-seat unicameral parliament called the 'Kurultai,' while also reinstating the vice presidency. In his congratulatory message reported by the state news agency Kazinform, President Tokayev linked the constitutional reform to Capital Day, describing Astana as a symbol of national independence and a city that determines the fate of the nation. Tokayev stated, 'Astana has been a driving force behind significant historical developments,' adding that 'our capital has achieved the status of a 'smart city' with the introduction of advanced administrative systems.' He noted that the enactment of the People's Constitution on the eve of Capital Day is symbolic, marking an event that opens a new and historic chapter for the nation and serves as a catalyst for modernizing key government and social institutions. The president also highlighted that the newly established constitutional law regarding the capital's status strengthens Astana's role as a political, administrative, economic, and cultural center. He mentioned that new parks, squares, and children's playgrounds have been developed for residents and visitors, and that Astana is enhancing its international standing as a venue for discussing regional and global issues. He emphasized that the capital will serve as a vivid example of responsible citizenship and the values of 'law and order,' as well as a new civic ethic based on the 'Other Kazakhstan' initiative. The 'Other Kazakhstan' initiative is a nationwide cleanliness and public culture campaign launched by President Tokayev in 2024. He expressed confidence that Astana will continue to prosper and stand at the forefront of building a 'just Kazakhstan.' Previously known as Akmolinsk, Astana became the capital of Kazakhstan in 1997 when the capital was moved from Almaty. From 2019 to 2022, it was also called Nur-Sultan, named after the first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Capital Day, celebrated on July 6, has been a national holiday since 2008. The constitutional transition is now moving to the next phase. The previous bicameral parliament held its final session on June 30, and elections for the new Kurultai are scheduled for August 23. The new parliament is expected to be inaugurated by September 1. * This article has been translated by AI. 2026-07-06 17:16:00
  • New constitution frames Kazakhstans Capital City Day
    New constitution frames Kazakhstan's Capital City Day SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev congratulated Kazakhstanis on Capital City Day on Monday, using the holiday message to spotlight the country's new constitution, which entered into force on July 1 and marks the most sweeping overhaul of Kazakhstan's political system since independence. The new charter, which Tokayev calls the People's Constitution, was approved by 87.15 percent of voters in a national referendum on March 15, with turnout of about 73 percent, according to Kazakhstan's Central Referendum Commission. It replaces the 1995 constitution, abolishes the two-chamber parliament in favor of a single 145-seat legislature called the Kurultai, and restores the office of vice president. In his message, carried by the Kazakh state news agency Qazinform, Tokayev tied the constitutional milestone directly to the capital's holiday, calling Astana a symbol of the country's independence and the place where the decisions shaping the nation's destiny are made. "Astana has become a driving force behind major historical developments," Tokayev said. "Our capital has earned the status of a smart city, where advanced governance systems have been introduced." It was symbolic, the president said, that the People's Constitution entered into force on the eve of Capital City Day, an event he described as opening a new and historic chapter for the state and modernizing its key institutions of government and society. Tokayev also pointed to a new Constitutional Law on the Status of the Capital, which he said strengthened Astana's leading role as the country's political, administrative, economic, and cultural center. He noted that new parks, public squares, and children's playgrounds had been built for residents and visitors, and said the city's international standing was growing as it increasingly hosts talks on regional and global issues. The president said the capital was destined to become a vivid example of a new civic ethic built on responsible citizenship, the values of Law and Order, and the Taza Qazaqstan initiative, a nationwide cleanliness and public culture campaign he launched in 2024. He added that he was assured Astana would continue to prosper and remain at the forefront of building a Just Kazakhstan. Astana, formerly known as Akmola and briefly renamed Nur-Sultan between 2019 and 2022 after former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, became Kazakhstan's capital in 1997 when the government moved from Almaty. Capital City Day, marked every July 6, has been a national holiday since 2008. The constitutional transition now moves to its next stage. The outgoing bicameral parliament held its final session on June 30, and elections to the new Kurultai are scheduled for Aug. 23, ahead of a Sept. 1 deadline for the new legislature to convene. 2026-07-06 17:08:15
  • World Cup fiasco fells Chung Mong-gyu after 13 years atop KFA
    World Cup fiasco fells Chung Mong-gyu after 13 years atop KFA SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - South Korean football lost its most powerful figure Monday, eight days after losing its World Cup. Chung Mong-gyu resigned as president of the Korea Football Association, ending 13 years and five months in charge and completing the collapse that had already consumed his hand-picked national team coach, Hong Myung-bo, whose group-stage failure turned him into a national pariah and has now claimed the man who put him there. The scale of the failure explains the speed of the fall. South Korea entered the tournament with what local media called a golden generation, headlined by captain Son Heung-min, in an expanded 48-team format where even a third-place group finish could be enough to advance. The team beat the Czech Republic 2-1, then lost 1-0 to Mexico and 1-0 to South Africa, finishing third in Group A, and its elimination was confirmed on June 28 Korean time when DR Congo beat Uzbekistan 3-1. Hong resigned the next day. Chung lasted one more week. His departure was supposed to look different. Chung, who is also chairman of construction conglomerate HDC Group, submitted his resignation letter after presiding over a final meeting of executives at Korea Football Park in Cheonan, the association said. First elected in January 2013 and re-elected three times, he announced on May 29, two weeks before the tournament began, that he would step down after the World Cup ended on July 19, calling support for the national team his final duty. The elimination pushed him out two weeks early. "All glory and achievements belong to the players and the fans, and all shortcomings and faults are entirely my responsibility," Chung said in a farewell statement translated from Korean. "I now step down from the presidency and return to being a passionate football fan." The fall did not stop with the two men. President Lee Jae Myung wrote on X after the elimination that he was baffled by the exit, blamed personnel decisions that put factionalism and loyalty over competence, and ordered the sports ministry to investigate the national team program. The ruling Democratic Party has been planning a parliamentary hearing into the failure and the management of the Korea Football Association (KFA), and the ministry plans a fresh audit of the federation. A failure years in the making The coach who oversaw the failure was Chung's most contested decision. The KFA appointed Hong in July 2024 after firing German coach Jurgen Klinsmann barely a year into his contract. Hong was not among the two final candidates originally under consideration, and the federation bypassed the final interview and presentation stage before confirming him. The backlash was immediate and came from inside the game. Park Joo-ho, a former national team midfielder who sat on the KFA committee handling the search, said the federation had disregarded proper vetting procedures. Former captain Park Ji-sung and 2002 World Cup veterans Lee Young-pyo and Lee Dong-gook echoed him. The criticism carried extra weight because Hong had failed in the job before. He coached South Korea at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where the team also went out in the group stage, and a petition posted on the government's Petition 24 site late last year argued he had already been proven a failure and predicted the tournament would go badly. The state agreed the process was broken. In October 2024, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism concluded the KFA had breached its own rules in hiring both Hong and Klinsmann, finding that a meeting between Hong and the federation's technical director did not constitute a proper interview, and demanded disciplinary action against Chung and other senior officials. The KFA fought the demand in court, and in April a ruling against the federation found flaws in the appointment process and insufficient board deliberation. The KFA has appealed, and the legal battle was still running when Chung resigned. Betrayed trust Chung survived all of it politically, winning a fourth term in February last year with 85.6 percent of the vote from an electorate of football insiders, on a mandate that ran through 2029. What he could not survive was the public. Many fans had been willing to give Hong a second chance despite 2014. "Although he messed up the 2014 World Cup, I still had huge trust in Hong. People learn from mistakes, you know," Kim Ji-hoon, a 42-year-old office worker living in Seoul, told AJP. "But I was wrong. I took a day off from work to join the supporters at Gwanghwamun Square on June 25, and I disappointed my whole family, who came with me. It was just terrible." Song, a 32-year-old freelancer, shared similar feelings of disappointment. "My hopes were high because this national team was the strongest dream team we have ever had, full of powerful players. I was devastated to see how poorly Hong managed them," Song said, adding: "I think I could have managed the team better than Hong." Banned from entry That disappointment turned into open mockery. On June 26, the day after the South Africa loss, a photo spread across Korean social media showing an A4 notice on a GS25 convenience store door reading "Hong Myung-bo is unacceptable." Within days, near-identical signs were photographed on a donut shop in Daejeon, a pasta restaurant in Seoul's Hongdae district, a Korean beef restaurant in Gimje, a traditional medicine clinic, and the front gates of private homes, according to the Financial News and other Korean outlets. The anger followed Hong across the Pacific. Two days after fans jeered the returning team at Incheon International Airport, where one banner read "Hong Myung-bo! Spit out the money and get out! Dismantle the KFA," Hong flew to Los Angeles to join his family. On July 5, a video circulated on X showing the owner of a Korean restaurant in Los Angeles taping a bilingual version of the sign to his door, the English line reading "Hong Myung Bo (KOREAN HEAD COACH) IS BANNED FROM ENTRY." "I do have something to say, but that story will come out someday," Hong told reporters at Incheon before departing, in remarks translated from Korean. What comes next Chung's exit does not end the reckoning, it opens the succession. Under the KFA's articles, one of the federation's four vice presidents will serve as acting president after confirmation by the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee, and federation bylaws require an election for a new president within two months of the vacancy. 2026-07-06 15:58:02
  • Korean researchers build future-predicting AI
    Korean researchers build future-predicting AI SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - Artificial intelligence that can see through a window, judge how light bounces off a surface, and think a step ahead before acting, arrived this week from a Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology research team. The four new technologies, unveiled together, push AI systems beyond recognizing what is in an image and toward understanding and reacting to the physical world the way a person does, a shift researchers call "physical AI." The work matters because it targets a problem that has held back self-driving cars, humanoid robots, and other machines meant to operate in real spaces. Those systems still struggle with basic physical realities like glass, changing light, and unfamiliar surroundings. The four papers were accepted at two of the field's most competitive conferences, the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2026 and the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2026, two as oral presentations and two as highlight papers, a distinction reserved for standout research. KAIST said the oral presentations ranked among the top 1.13 percent of ICLR submissions and the top 0.8 percent of CVPR submissions. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)'s Yoon Sung-eui, a professor in the School of Computing, led the research. KAIST said Monday that the four projects connect into a single technical chain, an AI system that sees, understands what it is looking at, predicts what happens next, and plans its own actions accordingly. The first technology, called GLINT, tackles a problem that has quietly frustrated computer vision for years: glass. People instinctively separate what they see reflected in a window from what lies beyond it. Most AI systems cannot make that distinction, and they process both as a single, confusing image. Yoon's team built GLINT to split the reflection from the transmitted scene, allowing the AI to correctly interpret spaces filled with windows, mirrors, or other transparent surfaces. The paper, "GLINT: Modeling Scene-Scale Transparency via Gaussian Radiance Transport," was presented orally at CVPR 2026 on June 5. The second technology, RadioGS, focuses on light itself. The same object looks different in sunlight than it does under indoor lighting, and that variation has long thrown off AI vision systems. RadioGS trains an AI to understand how light reflects off and scatters across a surface, so it can recognize an object's true material and surroundings even as the surrounding lighting changes. The paper, "Radiometrically Consistent Gaussian Surfels for Inverse Rendering," was presented orally at ICLR 2026 on April 23. The third technology, called Visual-RRT, gives robots a way to navigate using only a photograph. Conventional robots need exact coordinates to find their way somewhere. Visual-RRT instead lets a robot compare what it currently sees with a single target image and figure out its own path there. In physical tests, the robot reached its destination successfully using nothing more than that one photo, a result the team said could apply to service robots and self-driving delivery robots alike. The paper, "Visual-RRT: Finding Paths toward Visual-Goals via Differentiable Rendering," was selected as a CVPR 2026 highlight paper on March 27. The fourth technology, CLaD, addresses planning. Before people act, they tend to think a step ahead, asking what will happen if they move a certain way. CLaD gives AI systems the same habit, having them forecast the likely outcome of an action before choosing the best one to take. KAIST said the approach lets AI complete tasks with a higher success rate even in complex environments, which the team expects to make it a core technology for the next generation of autonomous robots. The paper, "CLaD: Planning with Grounded Foresight via Cross-Modal Latent Dynamics," was also selected as a CVPR 2026 highlight paper. Yoon said the four results mark a shift in what AI is capable of. "This research shows that AI is evolving beyond simply seeing with its eyes, toward understanding the real world and predicting what will happen next in order to decide its own actions," he said. "We hope this achievement contributes to the advancement of physical AI technologies that operate in real environments, including self-driving cars and humanoid robots." (Reference Information)\ Journal/Source: Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2026 Title: GLINT: Modeling Scene-Scale Transparency via Gaussian Radiance Transport Link/DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26181 Journal/Source: International Conference on Learning Representations 2026 Title: Radiometrically Consistent Gaussian Surfels for Inverse Rendering Link/DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01491 Journal/Source: Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2026 Title: Visual-RRT: Finding Paths toward Visual-Goals via Differentiable Rendering Link/DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16388 Journal/Source: Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2026 Title: CLaD: Planning with Grounded Foresight via Cross-Modal Latent Dynamics Link/DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29409 2026-07-06 14:03:29
  • Sookmyung scientists find bone benefit in ginseng
    Sookmyung scientists find bone benefit in ginseng SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - Mice with weakened bones got stronger after being fed particles extracted from red ginseng, according to a new study out of Sookmyung Women's University. The finding is early, but it gives South Korean researchers a concrete lead on turning the country's best-known health root into an actual osteoporosis drug. The particles are called red ginseng-derived nanovesicles, or RGNVs. Think of them as microscopic delivery pouches, roughly 200 nanometers wide, wrapped in a fatty double membrane and stuffed with ginsenosides, the active compounds that give ginseng its reputation. There are functional proteins in there too. The researchers checked the particles under an electron microscope and ran nanoparticle tracking to confirm what they had. Bone health comes down to a constant tug-of-war. Osteoblasts lay down new bone. Osteoclasts break down old bones. When a person loses estrogen, as happens at menopause, the osteoclasts start winning, and bone density drops. That is osteoporosis. In lab tests, the ginseng nanovesicles tipped the fight the other way, pushing osteoblasts to build while dialing back osteoclast activity. To see if that held up in a living animal, the team removed the ovaries of mice to replicate postmenopausal bone loss, then fed some of them RGNVs. Those mice lost less bone overall. Their thigh bones came back denser, the spongy internal bone structure looked healthier under the microscope, and blood tests showed lower levels of the markers that signal active bone breakdown. Professors Mun Se-hwan and Yang Young at Sookmyung Women's University's Department of Biological Sciences led the work. Cho Young-eun of Gyeongkuk National University (GKNU) also contributed. The paper ran in June 2026 in the Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, a journal with an impact factor of 12.6. Ginseng has been used in Korean medicine for centuries, mostly on faith and tradition. What this study adds is a mechanism, a specific set of nanoscale particles doing a specific job in bone cells, the kind of detail a drug developer could actually work with. Mun said: "Through joint research that included bone microstructure analysis and histological evaluation in an osteoporosis animal model, we confirmed the actual bone-protective effect of RGNVs. We expect this study to become a foundation for developing natural-product-based nanobio materials for the prevention and treatment of bone diseases." (Reference Information) Journal/Source: Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (IF 12.6, JCR top 1.9%) Title: Red ginseng-derived nanovesicles to modulate osteoblast and osteoclastogenesis for osteoporosis therapy Link/DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajps.2026.101168 2026-07-06 13:42:33