Can robots fill Korea's military ranks?
SEOUL, August 07 (AJP) - Robots are emerging as a necessity rather than a choice for South Korea, which must defend one of the world's most heavily militarized borders with a rapidly thinning pool of young men. As birthrates collapse and the number of available conscripts shrinks, the question facing militaries such as South Korea's is no longer whether machines will join the ranks, but how much work they can take off human soldiers. For now, that does not mean robotic infantry chargin
by Kim Hee-su
Kangaroo families become the new normal from Seoul to San Francisco
SEOUL, August 06 (AJP) - Suddenly, kangaroos seem to be multiplying around the world. Not in the Australian outback, but in family homes from South Korea to the United States, where growing numbers of young adults are delaying independence and staying in — or moving back to — their parents' houses as soaring housing costs outpace wages. The once-stigmatized "kangaroo family," in which adult children remain in the parental home, is increasingly becoming an economic nec
How AI sees SK hynix's downfall — and where it goes next
SEOUL, August 08 (AJP) - Ask two leading artificial-intelligence chatbots why SK hynix has lost more than half its value from its June peak, and they arrive at a remarkably similar conclusion: the company's business has not collapsed, but the price investors were willing to pay for its extraordinary AI-driven earnings has. AJP separately asked Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT to examine SK hynix's rout in Seoul and New York, including trading flows following its Nasdaq d
Dormant debt market exposes non-chip Korean Inc. slump
SEOUL, August 06 (AJP) - Summer arrived early for South Korea's corporate debt market as only a handful of investment-grade issuers broke the drought amid rising borrowing costs and subdued investor demand, exposing the slump across much of non-chip Korean Inc. Public corporate bond issuance totaled 2.96 trillion won ($2.1 billion) in July, down 16.1 percent from June and 37.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the Korea Financial Investment Association. Only 11 issuers conducted boo