SEOUL, October 31 (AJP) -Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping may have dominated global headlines during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation events in South Korea, but the figure who truly captivated the Korean public was the chief executive of the world’s most valuable company. 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang drew hundreds of reporters the moment he landed in Seoul on Thursday. By evening, the southern Gangnam district had nearly ground to a halt as crowds swarmed in hopes of catching a glimpse of the leather-jacket-clad tech star sharing fried chicken with the chiefs of Korea’s two most valuable companies — Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun. 

The unlikely sight of the three titans squeezed into a “Kkangbu Chicken” restaurant drew stunned diners and waves of onlookers seeking autographs, eventually forcing police to erect safety lines and control foot traffic around the busy streets leading to COEX. The trio later headed to the GeForce Gamer Festival, where Nvidia celebrated its 25th year in the Korean market. 

“Kkangbu” — a Korean word for a close friend popularized globally by the Netflix hit Squid Game — took on new meaning as Huang presented his Korean kkangbu with Nvidia DGX systems, the company’s signature AI supercomputing hardware, hinting at “great news” he plans to unveil during his visit. Nvidia is widely expected to announce new partnerships with Samsung and Hyundai before his departure.

 

At the GeForce event, Huang invited the two tycoons onstage to roaring cheers, underscoring the deepening ties between Nvidia and Korea’s industrial giants. The visit came just as Nvidia became the world’s first $5 trillion company, after its stock rose 3 percent to close at a $5.03 trillion valuation on Wednesday.

“Nvidia has been in South Korea for a very long time, with the GeForce in every PC bang,” Huang said, using the Korean term for internet cafés, expressing his gratitude to local gamers and consumers. 

Lee recalled that Samsung memory was first used in Nvidia graphics cards 25 years ago — the spark of his long-running friendship with Huang. Chung highlighted future cooperation, saying Nvidia chips will be core to autonomous cars and robots, and that Hyundai aims to explore connections between gaming and AI technologies. 

The festival also spotlighted collaborations with Korea’s game studios. NCSOFT unveiled trailers for “Aion 2” and “Sinder City,” the latter set in a post-apocalyptic Seoul. Both titles rely on advanced graphics enabled by Nvidia technology, said Baek Seung-wook, the company’s chief business officer. Krafton introduced an AI-powered in-game character, “PUBG Ally,” built with Nvidia’s ACE technology. 

Far from the political buzz in Gyeongju, Seoul offered a different stage: a fusion of Korean food, global tech hardware, and game-industry soft power, all wrapped in an unabashed display of local enthusiasm for the man many here see as the face of the AI era.

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