• Korean banks' bad loans hit 8-year high SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - South Korean banks' bad loans climbed to their highest level in eight years at the end of June as lending to small and midsized businesses sour amid rising interest rates.
• Foreign workforce hits record high in Korea SEOUL, September 2 (AJP) - South Korea's foreign resident population rose 6.3 percent from a year earlier to more than 2.9 million as of July, while the number of foreign workers living and working in the country reached a record high.
• Train tickets for Chuseok to go on sale this week SEOUL, September 2 (AJP) - Early booking for train tickets for Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving begins this week, KORAIL said on Wednesday. Tickets for KTX bullet trains and other trains for the country's biggest holiday, which falls from Sep. 24 to 27 this year, can be purchased online through KORAIL's website.
• Securities firms lead in six-figure salaries SEOUL, September 2 (AJP) - Employees at South Korea's top 500 companies earned an average 54.99 million won (US$40,100) in the first half of this year, according to an analysis by corporate tracker CEO Score and released Wednesday.
• Police scandals test Korea's sweeping prosecution reform SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - South Korea carried out a sweeping reshuffle of senior police officials Tuesday, replacing 14 of the country's 18 regional police chiefs, as public distrust of police investigations deepens over a scandal on Jeju Island involving the false closure of missing-person cases.
• S. Korea builds armored ambulance for combat evacuation SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - South Korea has completed development of an armored ambulance built to reach wounded soldiers in areas its current field ambulances cannot enter.

AJP Briefing

• BOK highlights demographic challenges in international forum SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - The Bank of Korea opened a two-day conference Wednesday on ageing and longevity, where Governor Hyun Song Shin urged early preparation for demographic pressures on growth, productivity and interest rates. The conference, titled “The Economics of Population Ageing and Longevity: From Challenges to Opportunities,” runs through Thursday in Seoul. It is jointly hosted by the BOK, the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Organisation for Economic Co-op
• Oil and bond jitters send KOSPI, Nikkei 2% lower SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - The global runup in interest rates and oil shock on renewed tensions in the Middle East that knocked Wall Street lower on Tuesday landed hard on oil-dependent Korea and Japan. The KOSPI, the benchmark index of the Korea Exchange, shed 186.82 points or 2.7 percent to 6,648.98 in early trade on Wednesday. The selloff panned out on a similar scale in Tokyo, also weighed down by bond and oil market jitters. Chipmakers, carmakers and power equipment names took the wo

AJP ScaleUP

• Airbility raises 6.5 billion won to shoot down drones with drones SEOUL, September 01 (AJP) - A Seoul aerospace startup has closed a Series A round to build small aircraft that hunt other aircraft, betting that the cheapest way to stop an incoming attack drone is another drone rather than a missile. Airbility said Tuesday that the 6.5 billion won ($4.7 million) round was led by Sazze Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, with existing backer Stonebridge Ventures returning and the Industrial Bank of Korea joining as a new shareholder. Cumulative fun
• Margin debt swells back as investors rotat into KOSDAQ SEOUL, September 1 (AJP) - South Korean margin borrowing rose for a ninth straight trading day and returned to the levels of mid-July as investors migrated to KOSDAQ outperforming the main index since last month. Outstanding margin loans across the two markets stood at 33.34 trillion won ($24.36 billion) as of Aug. 28, up 8.96 billion won ($6.5 million) from a day earlier, according to the Korea Financial Investment Association (KOFIA). The increase was driven by KOSDAQ stocks, where margin b

ASIA Insight

• Humanoids can beat Bolt. The harder race starts on the factory floor SEOUL, August 31 (AJP) - A humanoid robot ran 100 meters in 8.64 seconds at Beijing's World Humanoid Robot Games last week, nearly a full second faster than Usain Bolt's world record. Except that it kept going. Tiangong Ultra hurtled past the finish line, slammed into a padded barrier and crashed to the floor in a shower of sparks, leaving staff to rush in with fire extinguishers before the machine was carried away. Impressive as the machines are, much of humanoid robotics still ends w by Kim Dong-young
• Kazakhstan feels familiar. Family duty runs in reverse SEOUL, August 28 (AJP) - Kazakhstan can feel unexpectedly familiar to a Korean visitor. Across Astana, there are faces that at first glance would not look out of place in Seoul. Dark hair, familiar facial contours and gestures of deference toward older people can create fleeting moments of recognition in a country separated from the Korean Peninsula by thousands of kilometers of mountains, desert and steppe. The sense of familiarity runs deeper around the family table. Younger people wait for by Joonha Yoo

AJP Watch

• When the crowd becomes the court SEOUL, August 31 (AJP) - The Korean social media audience can be punishing and unforgiving toward celebrities and public figures. Its frenzied, vindictive pile-ons persist despite tragic casualties such as actor Lee Sun-kyun. The latest target is South Korean YouTuber Park Wi. The controversy began after Park, a wheelchair user who runs the popular YouTube channel Weracle, fell while getting off a KTX train on Aug. 14. A week later, he uploaded CCTV footage showing his wheelchair overturning
• G-Star 2026 launches promotional push with first pop-up store SEOUL, August 31 (AJP) - South Korea's largest gaming exhibition, G-Star 2026, has begun a pre-opening marketing campaign, unveiling a new "Special Pass" bundle and its first-ever pop-up store, as the country's game industry seeks to broaden its appeal beyond core players. The committee announced Monday that it will open the pop-up store from Sept. 1 to 6 at the Hyundai Department Store's Pangyo branch, south of Seoul, marking the first time the annual show has staged such

AJP Focus

• Korean jobseekers face an AI test with no rulebook SEOUL, September 01 (AJP) - AI literacy is becoming the latest addition to the long list of so-called "specs" young South Koreans need to compete for already-scarce entry-level jobs. The problem is that employers themselves are still figuring out what they want. SK hynix is removing its traditional personal-statement questions from applications in the second half of this year. Instead, applicants will be asked to describe how they have used AI in projects, research and problem-solvin
• U.S. EV plants may lay "golden eggs" for Korean battery makers SEOUL, September 01 (AJP) - South Korea's battery industry, groomed to build on the EV boom, is hurriedly moving to ride a new power "golden goose" — data centers — anchored in the United States' drive to catch up with China in AI infrastructure. "Let data reign," U.S. President Donald Trump proclaimed Monday. "The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,"