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Failing Army servers await Assembly budget decision
SEOUL, October 11 (AJP) - The South Korean army is experiencing a surge of server failures in its front-line commander network, but the government has cut every won the military requested for next year to start replacing the aging hardware. The Army Tactical Command Information System, known as ATCIS-II, logged about 400 server failures last year, compared with about 10 in 2020, according to military docum
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Korean banks had AI hacking warning weeks before data breaches
SEOUL, October 11 (AJP) - Weeks before hackers used artificial intelligence tools to steal customer data from seven South Korean financial firms, the sector's security agency had walked those firms' security staff through a similar AI attack on a domestic lender, according to documents the agency submitted to a lawmaker. The breaches began in late September. They exposed data on about 40,000 Yegaram
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Weak won lifts BOK's reserve earnings to record
SEOUL, October 11 (AJP) - South Korea's central bank earned a record 16.9 trillion won ($12.6 billion) from managing its foreign assets in 2025, helped by a weaker won that raised the value of its overseas earnings, data showed Sunday. The total was up 32 percent from 12.8 trillion won in 2024, according to data the Bank of Korea (BOK) submitted to People Power Party lawmaker Lee Jong-wook, who sits on
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Holiday crowds flock to Busan's stranded shark
SEOUL, October 10 (AJP) - Holiday crowds packed Busan's North Port on Saturday, the second day of a three-day Hangeul Day weekend, to catch a glimpse of Bukang, an endangered shark that has stayed in a narrow waterfront canal for 23 day
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Seoul's envoy to Kyiv returns home in POW row
SEOUL, October 10 (AJP) - South Korea’s ambassador to Ukraine, Park Ki-chang, returned to Seoul on Saturday morning, the Foreign Ministry said, two days after the government recalled him over Kyiv’s refusal to apologize for discl
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Developer shutters AI tool tied to Korean bank hacks
SEOUL, October 10 (AJP) - ARTEX, a Chinese AI penetration-testing tool linked to a string of breaches at South Korean banks, is going closed-source and will receive no further updates, its developer said. “Given the misuse of the tool, the ARTEX project will no longer be updated and will be converted to closed source,” the developer, known as Autumn
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Big firms take 77% of Korean pharma profits
SEOUL, October 10 (AJP) - Eight large companies captured about 77 percent of operating profit at South Korea’s listed pharmaceutical and biotech firms in the first half, while smaller rivals sank deeper into the red, according to the Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization. The eight posted a combined operating profit of 2.12 trillion won ($1.58 billion) in January to June, ou
South Korea rethinks military privileges as medals collide with fairness
SEOUL, October 08 (AJP) - Military service has long been one of South Korea’s most unforgiving tests of fairness, with disputes over who serves and who does not capable of ending public careers. Now the government is revisiting a decades-old system that allows selected athletes and artists to pursue their careers instead of entering regular military service, as a shrinking recruitment pool adds urgency to longstanding questions over privilege. Defense Minister Kang Shin-chul told a parli
by Kim Hee-su
Silver glitters: stocks lift wealth of the gray in Korea, U.S., Japan
SEOUL, October 07 (AJP) — Older generations on both sides of the Pacific — seemingly the last to have enjoyed an era of abundant liquidity and cheap borrowing — are benefiting from asset inflation, helping fuel consumer spending this year despite geopolitical risks and elevated interest rates. In South Korea, investors aged 60 and older accounted for 40 percent of individual investors’ domestic stock profits in the first half despite representing less than a third of tra
Samsung's staggering profit windfall masks deepening business imbalance
SEOUL, October 08 (AJP) - It all began humbly in 1975, with women in protective head coverings bent over workstations assembling integrated circuits for LED wristwatches. More than half a century later, Samsung Electronics has become the world’s largest vendor of memory chips powering everything from smartphones to sprawling AI data centers and turning factory output into profits on a scale unprecedented among the world's technology companies. The scale of that transformation is capt
South Korea is a de facto abolitionist state – or is it?
SEOUL, October 07 (AJP) - Fifty-two people remain on death row, growing old under sentences the state has left unfulfilled for nearly three decades. Their average age is 58.7. Among them are serial killers Yoo Young-chul and Kang Ho-soon, who killed 20 and 10 people, respectively. As the World Day Against the Death Penalty approaches on Oct. 10, South Korea remains caught between its long suspension of executions and a public largely unwilling to abandon them. A September survey commissioned b
