Boot camp becomes winter break SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) -What was once synonymous with hardship is increasingly being reimagined as a winter challenge experience. The 1st Marine Division on Jan. 12 opened the “2026 Winter Marine Corps Camp” at its training center in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, drawing participants eager to sample life inside Korea’s elite fighting force. About 230 people — including middle and high school students, university students and adults from across the country — signed up for the multi-day program. The division structured the camp around three themes: “Beginning,” “Challenge” and “Leap.” Day one: induction Participants began with an induction ceremony, followed by introductions to Marine Corps history, basic drill movements and traditional military songs — a first taste of discipline and esprit de corps. Training, winter edition From days two through four, the schedule shifted from classrooms to the field. Activities included mountain training, basic airborne exercises, inflatable boat (IBS) drills, hill training at Cheonja Peak and rides aboard the Korean Amphibious Assault Vehicle (KAAV). This year’s camp also introduced a new program on military drones, offering participants a demonstration of how unmanned systems are increasingly integrated into modern operations. Safety first The division said the training is being operated flexibly in response to severe winter weather, with enhanced safety protocols in place. Measures include advance risk assessments and the constant deployment of medical personnel throughout the program. For many participants, the camp offers not just a break from routine, but a hands-on glimpse into military life — turning winter vacation into a test of endurance, teamwork and resolve. 2026-01-14 15:44:58

South Korea's finance chief links pension strategy, digital assets to currency stability SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) - Despite a record current-account surplus, South Korea’s currency market has become more volatile, driven by imbalances in capital flows rather than trade, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Koo Yoon-cheol said Wednesday. Koo made the remarks Tuesday in a video address to a symposium hosted at the Korea Federation of Banks building in Seoul, while on a visit to the U.S. The event focused on changes in the foreign-exchange market environment and policy priorities. He attributed the recent market moves to imbalances in foreign-exchange supply and demand, citing in particular a rapid increase in overseas securities investment by domestic institutions. The government, he said, is working to strengthen economic fundamentals while also pursuing short-term market responses and measures to improve supply-demand conditions. Koo highlighted the National Pension Service as a key participant in the market, noting that its overseas assets now exceed South Korea’s foreign-exchange reserves. He said the government would accelerate discussions on a new framework aimed at balancing investment returns with foreign-exchange market stability. Turning to South Korea’s long-running push to be included in MSCI’s developed-market index, Koo described the effort as essential to enhancing the attractiveness of the country’s capital and foreign-exchange markets and aligning them more closely with advanced economies. Koo also pointed to digital assets as a potential source of structural change in financial markets, saying their institutionalization could reshape trading beyond traditional financial and foreign-exchange transactions. On stablecoins, Koo said setting clear rules is an urgent task, adding that the government plans to prepare measures within the year to prevent regulatory circumvention as stablecoins are legalized. * This article, published by Aju Business Daily, was translated by AI and edited by AJP. 2026-01-14 15:43:04

Ice rink in Seoul attracts over 100,000 visitors in less than a month SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) - Over 100,000 people have visited an ice rink in front of Seoul Plaza since its opening for this winter in mid-December, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said on Wednesday. The ice rink, which runs until Feb. 8 after opening on Dec. 13 last year, has proven popular among citizens looking to enjoy winter activities at affordable prices, drawing an average of about 4,000 visitors a day, up from last winter's daily average of 3,269. Visitors can skate from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Friday, with extended hours on Saturdays and public holidays, for just 1,000 Korean won or less than a buck, a price unchanged since the rink's first seasonal opening in 2004. Free rentals of safety gear including helmets and knee pads are available, along with amenities and other facilities for users' convenience. The rink's opening coincided with the city's winter festivities including a lantern festival along the Cheonggye Stream in central Seoul, allowing visitors to enjoy urban winter charms throughout the day. An open-air market with makeshift booths selling agricultural produce and other specialty products is adding to the fun, drawing not only rink visitors but also nearby office workers. In particular, farmers from Gunsan in North Jeolla Province are tempting passersby with same-day-harvested strawberries and winter snacks such as roasted sweet potatoes and cuttlefish, selling like hotcakes. "The city government will continue to ensure the safety of all visitors, helping them make good winter memories," said Kim Myeong-ju, a Seoul city official. 2026-01-14 15:05:52

KEPCO eyes US market with Columbia grid project SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) - Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) said Wednesday it has signed a technology cooperation agreement with the city of Columbia, S.C., as it looks to expand its business in the U.S., the world’s largest electricity market. KEPCO said it signed a memorandum of understanding on power distribution grid technology cooperation on Jan. 13, local time, at Columbia City Hall. The agreement was signed by Jung Chi-kyo, KEPCO’s executive vice president, and Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann. The partnership is aimed at adapting KEPCO’s distribution grid operating technologies to U.S. market conditions. The company plans to pursue demonstration projects and commercialization in the U.S. for its in-house systems, including an advanced distribution management system, or ADMS, and an energy management platform known as K-BEMS. Under the agreement, KEPCO and the city of Columbia will form a joint working group involving KEPCO’s research arm, the Korea Institute of Energy Technology, the Electric Power Research Institute and the University of South Carolina. The group will develop a U.S.-tailored distribution grid operations solution and carry out a demonstration project using Columbia’s power grid. KEPCO said Columbia’s plan to source 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2036 has heightened the need to improve efficiency in aging distribution networks and to manage the growing use of distributed energy resources. Applying KEPCO’s operating technology is expected to enhance grid safety and help lower energy costs, the company said. KEPCO described the project as its first step into the U.S. power distribution market, saying it will use the Columbia project as a reference case for expanding South Korean grid technologies more broadly across the U.S. power sector. “KEPCO’s distribution operations know-how and proven technology can contribute to improving service quality and supporting local economic development,” Jung said. 2026-01-14 14:42:25

Korean payroll growth stagnates in 2025 amid weak domestic demand, youth job scarcity SEOUL, Jan. 14 (AJP) — South Korea’s labor market held up on the surface in 2025, with employment and participation rates reaching record highs, but stagnant payroll growth, manufacturing job losses and the highest youth unemployment in three years underscored lingering fragility, government data showed Wednesday. According to the Ministry of Data and Statistics, the number of employed people aged 15 and older reached 28.769 million in 2025, up 193,000, or 0.7 percent, from the previous year. Payroll gains have remained below 200,000 for a second consecutive year, reflecting sluggish economic growth of around 1 percent or less. The employment rate for those aged 15 to 64 rose to 69.8 percent, the highest on record under OECD standards. The overall employment rate stood at 61.5 percent, up 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier and the best level since data collection began in 1963. Despite the strong headline figures, conditions worsened for younger workers. The employment rate for those aged 15 to 29 fell to 45.0 percent in 2025 from 46.1 percent a year earlier, while the youth unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent from 5.9 percent, the highest in three years. Job losses were concentrated in key industries. Employment in construction fell 6.1 percent year on year, reflecting a prolonged sectoral downturn, while manufacturing employment declined 1.6 percent. The number of “idled” people — those neither working nor actively seeking employment — continued to rise, increasing from 2.351 million in 2023 to 2.467 million in 2024 and further to 2.555 million in 2025. By age group, the idled population increased by 19,000 among those in their 20s and by 67,000 among those aged 60 and older, highlighting growing difficulties for young people entering the labor market. The share of discouraged job seekers — those who have given up looking for work — within the economically inactive population also climbed steadily, from 14.5 percent in 2023 to 15.3 percent in 2024 and 15.8 percent in 2025. December data were largely in line with the full-year trend. Employment rose by 168,000 from a year earlier to 28.2 million, slowing from a gain of 225,000 in November. The youth employment rate was unchanged from the previous month, extending a period of weakness. Construction and manufacturing — sectors that account for a large share of regular jobs — each shed about 63,300 positions in December, reinforcing concerns over the durability of job creation amid weak domestic demand. 2026-01-14 14:32:57

Korea's indigenous AI model project faces debate over use of open-source components SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) - South Korea's government-backed initiative to develop an indigenous artificial intelligence foundation model is facing scrutiny over whether the use of open-source components from Chinese firms aligns with the project's definition of "sovereign AI." The Ministry of Science and ICT is set to announce Thursday the results of the first evaluation round for bidders in the national AI foundation model project. Of the five contenders — Naver Cloud, NC AI, Upstage, SK Telecom and LG AI Research — one will be eliminated in the initial cut. The project was launched under the banner of "Leaping into the world's top three AI powers," with the government positioning it as a sovereign AI development effort. Eligible models were defined as those developed domestically from design through pre-training, excluding derivative models fine-tuned from foreign systems. The government is funding GPU resources, data and engineering costs, aiming to produce a model capable of reaching 95 percent of global AI benchmark performance. However, questions have emerged over whether some contenders' development approaches meet the project's sovereignty criteria. The debate began after Upstage was accused of using inference code from Chinese AI firm Zhipu AI, based on similarities identified by industry observers. Scrutiny later extended to Naver Cloud, which acknowledged incorporating Alibaba's Qwen 2.5-VL 32B vision encoder and weights, and to SK Telecom, which has faced claims that it used inference code linked to Chinese firm DeepSeek. Upstage and SK Telecom have stated that inference code is separate from the AI model itself. They said such code functions as a deployment or distribution layer that improves compatibility and usability, without affecting core model training or capabilities. The inference code used by Upstage is released under the MIT license, while SK Telecom's code falls under the Apache 2.0 license. Both licenses allow free use, modification and commercial distribution with attribution. The Apache 2.0 license additionally includes explicit patent grants and disclosure requirements for major modifications. Naver Cloud's case has drawn closer scrutiny because it involved model weights. The company used Alibaba's Qwen 2.5-VL 32B vision encoder and weights, with analysis showing that its vision encoder weights share a cosine similarity of 99.5 percent with the Qwen series. The 32B model is released under the Apache 2.0 license and can be freely used, while the larger 72B version requires a license request to Alibaba if monthly active users exceed 100 million. Naver Cloud has said it possesses comparable in-house technology and selected Qwen for ecosystem compatibility and system optimization, adding that it could switch to proprietary technology if licensing thresholds become applicable. Some industry participants note that the ministry's project guidelines, announced in July, specify domestic model design and pre-training but do not explicitly require "from-scratch" development without any external components. An industry expert said that while the use of open-source technology is common and generally uncontroversial in private-sector development, questions arise when government funding is involved, particularly in projects framed around technological independence. Meanwhile, NC AI and LG AI Research have not been subject to similar scrutiny. NC AI said its VARCO model was developed independently, covering data collection, pre-training and tuning. LG AI Research's EXAONE was also developed without incorporating Chinese modules. According to evaluation results from the first round, EXAONE ranked first in 10 of 13 benchmark categories, recording the highest average score at 72 points. The model ranked seventh globally and first domestically in the Intelligence Index compiled by Artificial Analysis. The ministry has so far declined to clarify whether the project requires models to be developed entirely from scratch. Industry observers say the criteria may become clearer once the first elimination is announced. Some AI developers argue that debates over the origins of specific code components are less important than governance and control over data and deployment, noting that many countries developing AI systems rely on open-source technologies. 2026-01-14 14:17:07

PPP's internal ethics committee decides to expel former leader Han Dong-hoon SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) - The main opposition People Power Party's ethics committee on Wednesday decided to expel former party leader Han Dong-hoon from the party. The belated move came after the PPP's internal investigation into hundreds of defamatory comments about disgraced former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife Kim Keon Hee on the party-run online bulletin board, allegedly posted by Han and his family members in November 2024. Han's expulsion immediately prompted backlash from PPP lawmakers aligned with him, who called it "retaliation for Han's open opposition to Yoon's Dec. 3 declaration of martial law in 2024 and his later support for Yoon's impeachment, which went against the conservative party's dubious stance at the time. Some close to Han even described it as the "death of democracy within the party." But the committee accused Han of attempting to manipulate public opinion through those online posts in violation of party rules, making him subject to the harshest disciplinary measure. In response, Han wrote on Facebook, "I will defend democracy with the people." 2026-01-14 14:15:21

OPINION: The weight of a death sentence, the lightness of martial law The prosecution’s request for the death penalty against former President Yoon Suk Yeol is not merely about the punishment of one individual. It is a question the Republic of Korea is asking of itself: What kind of country are we? How far have we come? And what lines must never be crossed? That a state of martial law could even be contemplated for political reasons in a mature democratic republic with per-capita income exceeding $30,000 already signals a breach of basic principles and common sense. The significance of the death penalty request lies less in its severity than in its attempt to redraw a boundary that should never have been blurred. For responsible journalism, the first and most fundamental standard is adherence to basic principles and common sense. Martial law is an extraordinary measure, permissible only in times of war, national emergency, or threats equivalent to the survival of the state. Routine political conflict, power struggles, or declining approval ratings can never justify it. The Constitution grants authority, but it also clearly defines its limits. Once those limits are crossed, power ceases to be governance and becomes recklessness. Allegations that military and police forces were to be mobilized for political ends are, regardless of their ultimate legal determination, already difficult to accept in the language of common sense. Common sense asks a simple question: Why emergency powers instead of dialogue and due process? From the perspective of journalism committed to truth, justice and freedom, this prosecution is a test of democracy’s capacity for self-defense. Freedom is not absolute, and justice must stand on procedure. Emergency powers exist to protect liberty temporarily, not to extend political authority by shortcut. The symbolic weight of the death penalty request lies in how democracy confronts threats from within. Punishment should not be revenge; it must be a warning — a warning to all public officials that the constitutional order is not private property. International precedents sharpen this point. Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who seized power through a military coup, ultimately faced accountability under domestic and international law. In Spain, the 1981 coup attempt was neutralized when the king publicly declared loyalty to the Constitution, drawing a firm line against military intervention in politics. In the United States, responsibility for the January 6 Capitol riot extended even to former President Donald Trump. Institutional maturity reveals itself in moments of crisis. Democratic states, without exception, have defended the political neutrality of the military and the supremacy of constitutional order. From a perspective that values human dignity, culture and the natural foundations of society, the shadow of martial law stretches far beyond politics. Military neutrality erodes, citizens’ daily lives are shaken by fear, and trust in the economy and culture collapses almost overnight. Investment and exchange recoil from uncertainty. The soil for free debate and creative expression withers, and its recovery, like nature’s, takes time. Such damage cannot be fully measured in numbers — which is precisely why the standard of common sense must be uncompromising. What must not be lost in the debate surrounding this prosecution is the question of morality and conscience. Legal reasoning must be cool-headed, but those who wield the law must do so with a heated sense of responsibility. When a single decision by those in power can place an entire community at risk, democracy becomes most vulnerable. Power without reflection and authority without accountability invite repetition of the same error. To be sure, society must continue a separate and serious discussion about the death penalty itself. But the core issue here is not execution — it is standards. Where is the line between what is permissible and what is not? How should the judiciary respond when politics betrays procedure? In the court of common sense and constitutional principle, this prosecution seeks to make that line unmistakably clear. South Korea is now judged not by the speed of its growth but by the depth of its maturity. The moment martial law becomes imaginable as a political tool, the republic regresses from democracy to a system governed by convenience of power. Truth, justice and freedom are not preserved by declarations alone. The conditions of human life, culture and even nature are the first to be damaged when constitutional restraint collapses. That is why emergency power must always be placed first before the court of common sense — not left to the discretion of those who wield authority. The message of this prosecution is clear: No office, no justification, grants immunity when constitutional order is shaken. Democracy survives through tolerance, but when fundamental principles are breached, it must defend itself with firmness. This is the minimum level of maturity the Republic of Korea must now demand of itself. *The author is the President of Global Economic and Financial Research Institute (GEFRI) and an AJP columnist. 2026-01-14 14:08:53

Hyundai Rotem pivots toward robots, hydrogen in organizational overhaul SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) - Hyundai Rotem, a South Korean manufacturer with operations spanning defense, rail and plant engineering, has reorganized its business to position robots and hydrogen as its primary growth engines. The company said Wednesday that it has carried out a broad restructuring aimed at strengthening competitiveness in robot and hydrogen technologies. Central to the overhaul is the creation of a dedicated unit that consolidates both businesses into a single strategic pillar. Under the reorganization, Hyundai Rotem established a Robot & Hydrogen Business Office, bringing together a robot sales team and a robot research team. The company also created an AI Robot Team, signaling a broader push to elevate unmanned systems and AI as core, companywide capabilities. In addition, an Aerospace System Team was created under the Aerospace Development Center. Hyundai Rotem said the changes are intended to prepare the company for the “physical AI era,” with plans to apply unmanned technologies, artificial intelligence and hydrogen energy across its core businesses to upgrade its operating structure. A Hyundai Rotem official said the reorganization is aimed at strengthening technological competitiveness over the mid- to long term while building a faster and more flexible operating system. "We plan to pursue upgrades to our core businesses through execution-focused changes," the official said. 2026-01-14 14:04:40

Foreign investors extend buying streak in South Korean stocks, bonds SEOUL, January 14 (AJP) - Foreign investors were net buyers of South Korean stocks and bonds in December, extending net inflows to a fourth consecutive month. Net foreign inflows into South Korean securities totaled $7.44 billion in December, according to the Bank of Korea’s report on international finance and foreign-exchange market trends released Wednesday. The figure marked the largest monthly inflow since September, when inflows reached $9.12 billion. Bond purchases accounted for the bulk of the inflows, totaling $6.26 billion, while net stock buying came to $1.19 billion. Bond inflows had surged to $11.81 billion in November, the highest monthly figure since the data series began in 2008. In December, foreign holdings of South Korean bonds that matured during the month reached $6.49 billion, the largest amount recorded for any December, the central bank said. A BOK official said equity flows turned positive on expectations that rising memory chip prices would lift profitability at domestic semiconductor companies. Bond inflows, meanwhile, continued to be led by public-sector investors, even as sizable volumes of bonds matured. South Korea’s credit default swap premium on government bonds averaged 22 basis points in December, down from 23 basis points a month earlier, indicating slightly improved perceptions of sovereign risk. 2026-01-14 13:43:50