OpenAI Korea targets enterprise market as ChatGPT usage soars SEOUL, December 04 (AJP) - OpenAI Korea CEO Kim Kyung-hoon said the company aims to become the best partner for South Korean businesses transitioning to artificial intelligence, highlighting the rapid expansion of ChatGPT’s global footprint. Kim made the remarks Thursday at his first press conference since taking office in September. Kim said that daily message volume has jumped from 450 million in June last year to 2.63 billion this June, making AI “a part of everyd December 4, 2025

Samsung teases new flagship chip for Galaxy S26 series SEOUL, December 04 (AJP) - Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its upcoming mobile application processor, Exynos 2600, with a 30-second teaser video posted on its official YouTube channel. The Exynos 2600 is slated to power the next-generation Galaxy S26 series. The chip is reportedly the company’s first to be built with a cutting-edge 2-nanometer process. The teaser opens with the words, “In silence, we listened,” followed by promises that the new ch December 4, 2025

K-beauty brand O'ngredients gains traction at home and abroad on strong skin-barrier lineup SEOUL, December 04 (AJP) - South Korean skincare brand O’ngredients is gaining momentum both domestically and overseas, backed by strong sales of its skin-barrier products and rising visibility on global e-commerce platforms. According to industry data, O’ngredients’ Skin Barrier Calming Lotion has surpassed cumulative sales of 3 million units in South Korea as of July 2025 and ranked first overall on CJ Olive Young’s online store in December 2024. The prod December 4, 2025

POSCO Future M to work with US firm to co-develop solid-state battery materials SEOUL, December 04 (AJP) - POSCO's battery-materials unit, POSCO Future M, has signed a partnership with U.S.-based Factorial Energy to co-develop next-generation solid-state battery materials, the South Korean company said Thursday. The memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed on Nov. 25 on the sidelines of the Future Battery Forum in Berlin. Factorial Energy selected POSCO Future M as a partner after testing cathode samples from multiple global suppliers and determi December 4, 2025

Retroactive US tariff cuts remove uncertainty for Korean exporters SEOUL, December 04 (AJP) - The United States has retroactively reduced tariffs on South Korean automobiles to 15 percent effective Nov. 1, following recent trade negotiations, South Korea’s government said Thursday. The two countries are working to ease related customs procedures for exporters, it added. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued a pre-release of the Federal Register on Dec. 3, with formal publication schedule December 4, 2025

Samsung wins national technology award for GDDR7 as AI inference demand grows SEOUL, December 03 (AJP) - Samsung Electronics’ latest graphics memory was recognized by South Korea’s government as a key technology underpinning the country’s future AI competitiveness, amid growing industry focus on AI inference rather than model training. At the 2025 Korea Tech Festival, hosted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy at COEX in Seoul on Wednesday, Samsung received the Korea Technology Awards Presidential Prize for its 12-nanometer, 40 g December 3, 2025

Korea sees largest monthly stock outflow as foreign funds pivot to bonds SEOUL, December 03 (AJP) - Foreign investors offloaded a net 14.2 trillion won ($9.7 billion) worth of South Korean equities in November, the largest monthly divestment since records began in the 2000s, the International Finance Center (IFC) said in a report on Wednesday. The outflow surpassed the previous highs of 12.9 trillion won logged in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and 10.1 trillion won in April this year amid U.S. tariff-related tensions. While foreign December 3, 2025

Olive Young a must-visit stop in Korea owe 25% of sales to foreigners SEOUL, December 03 (AJP) - A quarter of revenue at CJ Olive Young stores across South Korea now comes from foreign customers, whose purchases surpassed the 1 trillion won ($770 million) mark this year in a sharp illustration of K-beauty’s global pull, the beauty franchise said Wednesday. From January through November, spending by foreign nationals at Olive Young’s offline stores nationwide reached the milestone, marking a 26-fold increase from 2022, when Korea’s December 3, 2025

HBM4 becomes the new battleground in Nvidia–Google chip war SEOUL, December 03 (AJP) - The real battle between Nvidia’s GPU-led ecosystem and Google’s rapidly expanding tensor processing unit (TPU) platform and the outcome hinges on how quickly and at what scale the world's top memory makers based in South Korea can keep up in the rollout of next-gen high-bandwidth memory dubbed HBM4. Samsung Electronics that had been laggard in the early-stage HBM race is positioned for an unexpected leap as it accelerates the conversions December 3, 2025

Tesla tops BMW as No. 1 imported car brand in South Korea SEOUL, December 03 (AJP) - Tesla has overtaken BMW to become the best-selling imported car brand in South Korea, industry data showed on Wednesday. The Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association (KAIDA) said new registrations of imported passenger vehicles rose 23.4 percent in November from a year earlier to 29,357 units. Cumulative registrations from January to November climbed 16.3 percent to 278,769 units. Tesla led the monthly tally with 7,632 units, outpac December 3, 2025