AJU PRESS ASIA FIRST NEWS AGENCY

Journalist

Shin Hye-an
  • KISA Invests 12 Billion Won to Foster Next-Generation Security Companies
    KISA Invests 12 Billion Won to Foster Next-Generation Security Companies The South Korean government is taking steps to nurture next-generation security companies, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) security. As cyber threats evolve with the rise of AI, the initiative aims to enhance the technological competitiveness and commercialization capabilities of domestic cybersecurity firms. On May 8, the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) announced the selection of 50 companies to undertake 18 projects focused on developing next-generation security products and services, as part of the "2026 Information Security New Technology Support Project." The initiative, which has a total budget of 12.04 billion won, will focus on four key areas: commercialization of AI-based security products, fostering AI security companies, developing a Korean integrated security model, and implementing zero trust frameworks. Companies such as Sands Lab, Kudo Communication, Enki White Hat, and SK Shieldus have been chosen for specific projects. KISA plans to support these selected firms in enhancing the technical maturity of their AI security products and services, facilitating their entry into both domestic and international markets. This support initiative comes in response to the growing demand for security threat detection and response technologies utilizing AI, as well as zero trust-based security systems. The proliferation of generative AI has led to more sophisticated security threats, including malware creation, phishing, and automated attacks, highlighting the need for enhanced response capabilities among businesses and public institutions. The government is focused on backing the development of new technologies by private cybersecurity firms and expanding the availability of security products and services applicable in real-world industrial settings. Additionally, KISA is expanding its efforts to cultivate cybersecurity talent in collaboration with the Ministry of Science and ICT. The agency is supporting educational programs such as the "Next-Generation Security Leader Training Course," which offers training and mentoring in digital forensics, security product development, security consulting, and vulnerability analysis, as well as a job-linked "White Hat Course" based on corporate demand. 2026-05-08 11:56:55
  • Daum Seizes Opportunity for Revival in AI Era
    Daum Seizes Opportunity for Revival in AI Era Once dubbed the "people's portal," Daum is seizing a revival opportunity in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Since its launch in 1995, Daum led the popularization of the internet in South Korea with services like Hanmail and cafes. However, its prominence waned in the 2000s until it was acquired by AI company Upstage, marking a potential resurgence. On May 7, Upstage finalized a contract to acquire AXZ, the operator of Daum, from Kakao. This deal involves a stock exchange where Kakao transfers its AXZ shares to Upstage while acquiring a stake in Upstage. With this acquisition, Daum transitions from being part of Daum Communications, which merged with Kakao in 2014, to being owned by Upstage. This change signifies more than just a transfer of ownership; Upstage aims to transform Daum into a next-generation AI portal, revitalizing its competitive edge in the AI era. Daum's heyday began with Hanmail and cafes. The free webmail service launched in 1997 popularized personal email, expanding Daum's initial user base. The introduction of Daum Cafe in May 1999 fostered online community culture, evolving Daum from a simple email service to a comprehensive portal. However, Daum's dominance was short-lived. In the 2000s, Naver gained traction with its "Knowledge-in" feature, shifting the portal market's focus. User engagement expanded beyond news and email to include shopping, video, and community features. As the mobile era emerged, Google significantly increased its market share, leaving Daum without a clear path to recovery. Although Daum sought a resurgence through its merger with Kakao in 2014, its strategic presence diminished within Kakao's mobile ecosystem. Daum's search market share fell to single digits, and it struggled to regain its former influence as a comprehensive portal. Critics noted that Daum had become reliant on news consumption and limited community features. Kakao separated Daum into an independent entity in 2023 and established AXZ through a physical spin-off last year. Despite declining search share and user attrition, Daum has been restructuring to revive its core portal functions, including news layout changes, enhanced content recommendations, and community feature improvements. Recently, it reintroduced a "real-time trends" feature. With Upstage's acquisition of AXZ, Daum plans to evolve into a next-generation AI portal. The strategy focuses on integrating Daum's accumulated search and content data with Upstage's AI technology. Upstage intends to enhance services based on Daum's search capabilities, including the integration of contextual AI.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-05-07 23:56:22
  • Upstage Completes Acquisition of Daum Operator AXZ
    Upstage Completes Acquisition of Daum Operator AXZ AI company Upstage has finalized its acquisition of AXZ, the operator of the portal Daum. Upstage plans to integrate its large language model (LLM) with Daum's search and content data to build a next-generation AI portal aimed at creating an accessible AI service ecosystem. On May 7, Upstage signed a formal acquisition agreement with Kakao, which will transfer its entire stake in AXZ. This marks Kakao's separation from the portal business 12 years after it absorbed Daum in 2014. The two companies had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in January to initiate the acquisition, followed by four months of in-depth due diligence. The MOU outlines the transfer of Kakao's entire AXZ stake to Upstage, with Kakao acquiring a minority stake in Upstage through a stock exchange. Upstage aims to transform Daum into an AI-driven portal and implement 'Context AI' services. This shift is expected to move away from keyword-based searches to a portal that understands user intent and context. Upstage's proprietary LLM, 'Solar,' will be central to the implementation of Context AI services. The company plans to combine Solar with Daum's extensive Korean language data accumulated from news, cafes, and blogs to enhance AI search capabilities and restructure the portal's services around AI. Additionally, Upstage anticipates that the acquisition will synergize with the government's 'Independent AI Foundation Model' project. Kim Seong-hoon, CEO of Upstage, stated, "The combination of Upstage's AI technology and the 30-year history of the Daum portal will mark a symbolic turning point in ushering in a new era of AI portals."* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-05-07 23:54:58
  • Kakao Posts Record Q1 Results, Pushes KakaoTalk-Based Agent AI Platform
    Kakao Posts Record Q1 Results, Pushes KakaoTalk-Based Agent AI Platform Kakao posted its strongest quarterly results on record in the first quarter, with both revenue and operating profit reaching all-time highs, the company said Thursday. Growth was broad-based across its core platform businesses, including advertising, commerce, mobility and payments. Kakao said it will use that momentum to accelerate its shift into an “agent AI platform” company. Over the medium to long term, Kakao aims to onboard all 50 million KakaoTalk users to AI services. It plans to expand in-house offerings including “ChatGPT for Kakao,” “Kanana in KakaoTalk” and “Kanana Search,” and is preparing to unveil its next model, “Kanana 2.5.” Kakao said in a regulatory filing that first-quarter revenue on a consolidated basis rose 11% from a year earlier to 1.9421 trillion won, while operating profit jumped 66% to 211.4 billion won. By segment, platform revenue increased 16% to 1.1827 trillion won. Within that, Tok Biz revenue rose 9% to 608.6 billion won, and Tok Biz advertising revenue climbed 16% to 338.4 billion won. Demand from financial-sector advertisers helped lift overall message volume, and a broader lineup of messaging products expanded how advertisers used the service. Business messaging revenue rose 27% from a year earlier, while display advertising revenue increased 10%. Tok Biz commerce, which includes Gift and Tok Deal, posted combined gross transaction value of 2.9 trillion won, up 10% from a year earlier. Kakao attributed the gain to a stronger product mix centered on fresh food and home appliances and more tailored user benefits. During the “Kakao Shopping Festa” held in March, Tok Store transaction value rose 18% year over year, and self-purchase transaction value within Gift surged 53%. First-quarter commerce revenue rose 1% to 270 billion won. Other platform revenue, including mobility and payments, rose 30% to 506.5 billion won. Kakao said its mobility business — spanning taxis, parking, last-mile logistics and advertising — delivered double-digit year-over-year revenue growth for a third straight quarter. Payments revenue topped 300 billion won for the first time, driven by growth across payments, financial and platform services. Content revenue rose 5% to 759.4 billion won. Music revenue increased 11% to 484.6 billion won, and media revenue climbed 23% to 92.4 billion won. Story revenue totaled 182.4 billion won. Kakao said profitability typically is weaker in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, but this year improved as efficiency efforts focused on core businesses were reflected in results. Kakao said it will step up its transition to an agent AI platform this year, with the goal of having all 50 million KakaoTalk users onboarded to AI services. In the second half, it plans to roll out agent commerce more fully, enabling reservations and payments within KakaoTalk based on conversational context. Kakao has already launched AI services that use KakaoTalk chat context, including Kanana in KakaoTalk and Kakao Search, in stages. The company said it is building a flow that links identifying user needs in conversation to reservations and payments. Jeong Shin-a, Kakao’s CEO, said on a first-quarter 2026 earnings conference call Thursday that “the second half will be an important turning point when anyone can experience an agent that starts from a domestic conversation and completes payment.” Kakao’s AI services currently available in KakaoTalk are ChatGPT for Kakao, Kanana in KakaoTalk and Kanana Search. Kakao said it segments target users based on AI familiarity and whether they use paid services — offering ChatGPT for Kakao to users with higher AI understanding, and positioning Kanana in KakaoTalk for users who can experience AI naturally in daily life without paying. ChatGPT for Kakao has surpassed 11 million cumulative sign-ups. Compared with the previous quarter, monthly active users and monthly messages sent per user more than doubled. Jeong said the service is moving beyond one-time visits into repeated use. Kanana in KakaoTalk is designed to identify user needs from conversational context and connect information delivery to reservations and payments. Kakao said it linked Kanana in KakaoTalk with its Gift service starting last month. Jeong said she expects 31 million users to download and use the Kanana in KakaoTalk model by year’s end. She said positive evaluations of AI response quality are “around 80%,” adding that Kakao will continue improving the model and raise service completeness so more users can experience higher-quality AI. Kakao also said it will focus on upgrading Kanana Search, a conversational-context-based discovery service that provides place and product search results and trend-topic exploration within KakaoTalk chat rooms. Kakao is also strengthening its in-house AI models. Following Kanana 2, unveiled last year, the company is preparing to release Kanana 2.5, sized at 150B parameters. Jeong said Kakao has confirmed Kanana 2.5 delivers the best performance among domestic and overseas large language models of similar parameter size, and that it showed strong performance in execution-focused areas such as function calling compared with top global models. Jeong said Kanana in KakaoTalk and Kanana Search are new types of services even in global markets and could become key entry points for expansion into agent AI. Kakao’s medium- to long-term AI vision, she said, is for all 50 million KakaoTalk users to have personalized agents. * This article has been translated by AI. 2026-05-07 13:45:20
  • Kakao CEO: Shift to Agent AI Platform Aims to Onboard 50 Million Users
    Kakao CEO: Shift to Agent AI Platform Aims to Onboard 50 Million Users Kakao is accelerating a strategy to “onboard 50 million users” to AI services as it pivots toward an agent AI era. Rather than relying on a single, massive model, the company plans to combine a lightweight top-level orchestrator with domain-specific agents to improve cost efficiency and scalability. CEO Jeong Shin-a said on a conference call for Kakao’s 2026 first-quarter earnings that many agent AI services drawing attention today face limits, including excessive token consumption and privacy risks. “Those limits will be a clear opportunity for Kakao in the coming agent AI era,” she said. Jeong described many web-based agent designs as “one huge agent” handling all domains and tools. She said screenshot-based vision-language models and computer-use agents can consume large numbers of tokens and may take longer to produce desired results. By contrast, Kakao’s agent AI platform is designed so a lightweight orchestrator analyzes user intent while specialized agents collaborate. “We built it so tasks are carried out organically through protocols between agents,” Jeong said, calling it a structure that sharply reduces token use and processing time. Kakao also previewed plans to disclose “Kanana 2.5,” a 150B-parameter model, following last year’s “Kanana 2.” Jeong said Kanana 2.5 was developed from scratch and optimized for the agent AI platform, showing stronger performance in execution-focused areas such as planning and function calling compared with leading global models. She said Kakao’s in-house “Kanana tokenizer” also improved training costs and inference speed. Jeong said Korean can require up to three times more tokens than English when using general-purpose tokenizers. With the Kanana tokenizer, she said, Kakao confirmed up to a 40% reduction in training costs and up to a 60% improvement in inference speed. This year, Kakao plans to expand user touchpoints, a key element of an agent AI ecosystem, with the goal of onboarding all 50 million KakaoTalk users through multiple service formats. For users with higher AI familiarity and an intent to use paid services, Kakao pointed to “ChatGPT for Kakao.” For a more natural, everyday AI experience without charges, it highlighted “Kanana in KakaoTalk.” Kanana in KakaoTalk uses conversation context to identify user needs and connect services from information to reservations and payments. Kakao said user activity has improved steadily after an iOS closed beta test and an Android launch, and retention has held at about 70%, similar to the closed beta. Jeong said the service remains in an early stage, with work still needed to improve answer accuracy and quality and to refine when the AI should step in. She said Kakao will raise user satisfaction through model upgrades. Kakao last month also introduced “Kanana Search,” a context-based discovery service. It provides place and product search results and trend-topic exploration inside KakaoTalk chat rooms. Jeong said that even in the third week after the beta launch, activity rose meaningfully compared with traditional keyword-driven search. Jeong also cited momentum for ChatGPT for Kakao, which has surpassed 11 million cumulative sign-ups. She said monthly active users nearly doubled from the previous quarter, and monthly messages sent per user more than doubled, indicating the service is moving beyond one-time visits into repeated use. “Kakao’s mid- to long-term AI vision is for all 50 million KakaoTalk users to have personalized agents,” Jeong said. On advertising, Jeong said growing short-form and content consumption inside KakaoTalk is translating into stronger ad performance, making ads another key growth engine alongside AI. She said average daily valid short-form plays as of April more than doubled from shortly after the service launched, and demand for video-focused ads is flowing in quickly. She said the revenue share from display ad products other than Bizboard expanded from the 10% range in the first quarter of last year to about 30% in the first quarter of this year, as the ad revenue mix diversifies beyond a single product and a small number of large advertisers. Kakao said consolidated first-quarter revenue rose 11% from a year earlier, marking its first double-digit growth in eight quarters. Jeong said the company achieved “qualitative growth” by strengthening its core competitiveness. Jeong said the second half will be an important turning point as users can broadly experience agents that start with domestic conversations and complete payments. She said Kakao will show a future in which all 50 million users communicate routinely with personalized AI agents on KakaoTalk. 2026-05-07 12:09:14
  • Kakao CFO: Governance Simplification to Cut Affiliates to 87 After Kakao Games Restructuring
    Kakao CFO: Governance Simplification to Cut Affiliates to 87 After Kakao Games Restructuring Shin Jong-hwan, Kakao’s chief financial officer, said on a first-quarter 2026 earnings conference call on Wednesday that the company is carrying out a governance simplification plan that has reduced the number of consolidated subsidiaries to 93. He said the total number of affiliates is expected to fall to about 87 once procedures related to gaming unit Kakao Games are completed. Shin said the planned restructuring of Kakao Games this year, following the sale of a stake in Kakao Healthcare at the end of last year, is aimed at building a structure in which each business can grow with partners that have strong expertise and execution capabilities. He said Kakao will step down as the largest shareholder but remain as a minority shareholder, allowing it to share in gains from future growth and rising value of the businesses. 2026-05-07 10:57:03
  • Kakao posts record first-quarter operating profit as platform, content revenue rises
    Kakao posts record first-quarter operating profit as platform, content revenue rises Kakao said it posted its highest-ever quarterly revenue and operating profit in the first quarter, with broad growth across its platform and content businesses. Advertising, commerce, mobility and payments led gains in its core platform operations. On a consolidated basis, Kakao said May 7 that first-quarter revenue rose 11% from a year earlier to 1.9421 trillion won, while operating profit jumped 66% to 211.4 billion won. Platform revenue increased 16% to 1.1827 trillion won. Within that, Talk Biz revenue rose 9% to 608.6 billion won, and Talk Biz advertising revenue climbed 16% to 338.4 billion won. Kakao said demand from financial advertisers boosted overall message volume, and a wider range of messaging products expanded how advertisers used the service. Business messaging revenue rose 27% from a year earlier, while display advertising revenue increased 10%. Combined gross transaction value for Talk Biz commerce, including Gift and Talk Deal, grew 10% to 2.9 trillion won. Kakao attributed the increase to stronger product offerings in high-demand categories such as fresh food and home appliances, along with more personalized user benefits. After the March “Kakao Shopping Festa,” Talk Store transaction value rose 18% from a year earlier, and self-purchase transaction value within Gift surged 53%. First-quarter commerce revenue increased 1% to 270 billion won. Other platform revenue, which includes mobility and payments, rose 30% to 506.5 billion won. Kakao said mobility posted double-digit year-over-year revenue growth for a third straight quarter, supported by taxi, parking, last-mile logistics and advertising. Payments revenue topped 300 billion won for the first time, driven by growth across payments, financial and platform services. Content revenue rose 5% to 759.4 billion won. Music revenue increased 11% to 484.6 billion won, and media revenue climbed 23% to 92.4 billion won. Story revenue totaled 182.4 billion won. Operating expenses rose 7% to 1.7307 trillion won. Kakao’s operating margin was 11%. A company official said profitability typically is weaker in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, but improved this year as efficiency efforts focused on core businesses were reflected in results. Kakao said it plans to accelerate a shift this year to an agentic AI platform, citing growing interest as execution-focused AI that connects to real-world actions spreads quickly. The company previously launched AI services “Kanana in KakaoTalk” and “Kakao Search,” based on conversation context within KakaoTalk. Kakao said it is building a structure that links identifying user needs in chats through to reservations and payments, and aims to onboard and serve 50 million users on its AI services. Chief Executive Jeong Shin-a said, “In the first quarter, we achieved qualitative growth by strengthening our fundamental competitiveness,” adding, “Building on the structural growth momentum of our existing businesses, we will begin the transition to an agentic AI platform used by 50 million users.” 2026-05-07 09:46:52
  • Com2uS Unveils Cinematic Teaser for Aiberton’s New MMORPG “Zeus: God of Arrogance”
    Com2uS Unveils Cinematic Teaser for Aiberton’s New MMORPG “Zeus: God of Arrogance” Com2uS on Tuesday launched a teaser site for “Zeus: God of Arrogance,” a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, being developed by Aiberton. The site features the slogan, “The greatest myth, allowed for everyone,” along with a roughly 28-second cinematic clip. Com2uS said the slogan reflects the game’s aim of letting anyone prove their existence in their own way. The video shows a colossal statue collapsing, a village engulfed in flames, a despairing crowd and Zeus looking down, offering a compressed look at a world in ruin and the game’s tone. “Zeus: God of Arrogance” is based on the Greek myth of Zeus, but it does not follow the original stories directly, instead reinterpreting them. The game is set in a world fractured by Zeus’ arrogance, where candidates to become “vessels of the gods” navigate upheaval tied to Pandora’s box, the 12 Titans and the revival of Cronos. Aiberton is developing the title with a third-quarter launch target. Com2uS said the teaser site marks the start of a full marketing push. The company previously made a strategic investment in Aiberton at its founding and signed a publishing agreement for the new title. Aiberton was founded in February 2024 by CEO Kim Dae-hwan, who previously held roles at Nexon including head of a new development division. Kim also served as head of overseas development for Nexon’s MapleStory and as CEO of Nexon Red. From 2019, he led Nexon’s new development division and oversaw global hits including “Prasia War” and “Dave the Diver.” Com2uS said it expects the game to perform well globally by combining its publishing capabilities with Aiberton’s development strength aimed at the international market. A Com2uS official said the company will gradually release information on the game’s world, key content and service details through the teaser site and official channels.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-05-06 17:43:09