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Korea's defense of won tested by SpaceX frenzy and foreign exodus SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - South Korean authorities battling to defend the won near global financial crisis-era levels appeared to move to contain a retail rush into the blockbuster SpaceX listing on Friday, as surging demand for U.S. assets threatens to add pressure on the currency alongside a record foreign capital exodus. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) on Thursday summoned auditors from 12 major broke
South Korea set to face Czechia in must-win World Cup opener SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - This year's FIFA World Cup kicked off its month-long football extravaganza on Thursday, launching the largest tournament in the sport's history.
BTS turns Busan into Asia's hottest destination SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - Busan, South Korea's second-largest city and biggest port, has turned into a mini-Asia as it hosts a two-day homecoming concert for BTS, timed with the group's 13th anniversary. The summer vacation season arrived early for the coastal city, with fans crowding department stores, luxury outlets, convenience stores and Olive Young shops, while roaming beaches and BTS-themed stree

Korea's job decline exposes weakness beneath chip boom SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - South Korea’s employment rate fell by the steepest pace in five years as weakness in manufacturing and youth hiring exposed the limited spillover from a recovery increasingly driven by memory chip exports. According to data released Thursday by Ministry of Data and Statistics, the employment rate for people aged 15 and older fell 0.5 percentage point to 63.3 percent, marking t
Why a concrete truck strike is threatening South Korea's high-tech chip ambitions SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - The sprawling industrial belt south of Seoul is the heart of South Korea's semiconductor industry, home to the massive campuses of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix that dominate the global memory chip market powering the artificial intelligence boom.
Cuba woos Korean firms as sanctions risks loom large SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - Cuba urged Korean companies to explore business opportunities in agriculture and renewable energy on Thursday, as Havana seeks to turn its new diplomatic ties with Seoul into practical economic cooperation despite deepening U.S. sanctions and persistent payment and logistics risks. The pitch came at the “Cuba Business Opportunities” seminar held in central Seoul, co-hosted b
Inequality deepens for Korean households on wealth gap and AI rise SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - South Korea's household inequality is becoming more complex as property-driven wealth gaps combine with renewed income polarization, the Bank of Korea said Thursday. Rising real estate prices have widened wealth gaps between homeowners and non-homeowners, regions and generations.

Buried beneath Korea's chip boom, refiners fight for survival SEOUL, June 11 (AJP) - Buried beneath South Korea's semiconductor boom is a quieter survival story unfolding in the country's refineries and petrochemical plants. South Korea's economic narrative has been dictated by silicon in recent years. Memory giants have propelled the KOSPI past stock markets in cities such as London and Toronto while joining the exclusive trillion-dollar market-capitalization club. In contrast, some of the country's oldest industrial pillars have been qu by Kim Dong-young

What does SpaceX's upcoming IPO signal for Asia? SEOUL, June 10 (AJP) - For years, investing in space felt more like science fiction than finance, more akin to dreaming about Mars. Fascinating and ambitious, it nevertheless seemed far distant from everyday economic activity. But that is beginning to change. Should SpaceX move ahead with its initial public offering (IPO) later this week, the larger story is not the stock itself. It is the arrival of the space industry as a mainstream industrial sector, one that could reshape technology, manufa

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Essay From PC cafés to pork belly: Inside Jensen Huang's unconventional Seoul summit SEOUL, June 05 (AJP) - Neon lights, the rapid clatter of keyboards in a bustling Hongdae PC café, and the unmistakable sizzle of meat hitting a hot grill—these are hardly the traditional backdrops for high-stakes tech diplomacy. Yet, on the evening of June 5, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang traded the polished boardrooms of Silicon Valley for the vibrant, everyday rhythms of Seoul. Immersing himself first in South Korea's grassroots digital culture, Huang eventually made his

Essay New voting culture takes shape among younger voters

Essay Incheon's Hanagae Beach opens for summer season

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Korea's defense of won falls short against foreign capital exodus SEOUL, June 10 (AJP) - South Korean authorities this year have been employing every tool in the playbook to bolster the Korean won, dangerously flirting around post-2008 crisis levels — from a $65 billion FX swap arrangement with the National Pension Service and suspected smoothing operations to a rare joint probe into foreign exchange activities at major banks. But so far, all have proved of little avail. Each measure has offered short-term relief, only to wear off with every bout of KOS

Huang finds the whole AI cake in Korea, every layer of it SEOUL, June 09 (AJP) - Artificial intelligence is a five-layer cake, Nvidia preaches, and its chairman Jensen Huang appears to have found the full cake in South Korea. In Nvidia's telling, AI is a composite stack: energy at the bottom, then chips, then the infrastructure that houses and serves them, then the models, and finally the applications where economic value is harvested. Every application, Huang argues, draws demand all the way down to the power plant, and supremacy in the AI era h

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