• Samsung hosts OpenAI's Sam Altman for AI strategy talks with 50 executives SEOUL, November 01 (AJP) - Samsung Group hosted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for talks with about 50 senior executives on Saturday, as South Korea's largest conglomerate accelerates efforts to integrate artificial intelligence across its businesses. The meeting, held at Samsung's Human Resources Development Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, brought together executives from its electronics, financial and
• Seoul, Washington, Tokyo reaffirm North Korea denuclearization goal SEOUL, October 31 (AJP) - South Korea, the United States and Japan reaffirmed their commitment to the complete denuclearization of North Korea and agreed to expand maritime and economic cooperation in the Pacific Arctic during trilateral talks in Atlanta on Friday (local time), amid heightened tensions following Pyongyang's latest ballistic missile launches.
• Hanwha wins first U.S. Navy shipbuilding contract SEOUL, October 31 (AJP) - Hanwha Defense USA, a subsidiary of South Korea's Hanwha Aerospace, has secured a $269 million contract to build a landing ship for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, marking its first U.S. Navy shipbuilding contract.
• North Korea's crypto theft industry under spotlight after Binance hack SEOUL, October 31 (AJP) - North Korea's cryptocurrency hacking operations have emerged as a major source of foreign currency for the isolated regime, with a record $6.3 billion cyberattack on the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange drawing renewed attention to Pyongyang's growing reliance on digital theft to finance its weapons programs.
• Ukraine rules out diplomatic break with South Korea SEOUL, October 31 (AJP) - Ukraine's Foreign Ministry has rejected speculation over a possible diplomatic rupture with South Korea, saying Kyiv remains committed to normalizing relations with Seoul amid tensions over the disclosure of the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war.
• Lee rebukes criticism over frequent overseas trips SEOUL, October 31 (AJP) - President Lee Jae Myung on Saturday fired back at opposition criticism over his frequent overseas trips, arguing that presidential visits abroad involve demanding schedules and should be judged by their diplomatic outcomes rather than their frequency.

AJP Briefing>

• Alphabet's heavy AI spending hits chip stocks in Seoul and Tokyo SEOUL, Oct. 30 (AJP) - Wall Street's concerns over Alphabet's heavy spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure spread to South Korean and Japanese chipmakers that supply the tech giant, sending the KOSPI down 3.5 percent on Friday. In Seoul, the benchmark KOSPI fell 209.62 points or 3.48 percent to close at 5,730.74. The main index dropped as much as 5.7 percent during the session, hitting a low of 5,599.4. The Korea Exchange triggered a five-minute suspension of program s
• SK taps ex-KEPCO chief to run SK Innovation SEOUL, October 30 (AJP) - SK Group named Cheong Seung-il, a former vice industry minister who once ran state utility Korea Electric Power Corp., as chief executive of its energy arm SK Innovation, while keeping SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung in place, the group said Friday. The annual reshuffle was brought forward by about a month for a second straight year. It leaves most affiliate heads untouched after last year’s sweeping overhaul and puts new leaders in charge of the energy and chemical

AJP ScaleUP

• Pharmacy platform firm sets IPO price ahead of KOSDAQ debut next month SEOUL, October 30 (AJP) - Pharmacy platform operator Baropharm has set its initial public offering (IPO) price at 16,400 won (US$12.2) per share, putting its valuation at about 200 billion won ahead of its KOSDAQ debut next month. The firm will open its share offering to retail investors on Nov. 2-3, with Mirae Asset Securities acting as the lead underwriter, ahead of its scheduled KOSDAQ listing on Nov. 11. Founded in 2019, Baropharm operates a digital platform that allows pharmacies to order
• Hydrogen power supplier makes red-hot KOSDAQ debut SEOUL, October 29 (AJP) - Industrial turbomachinery maker TNE Korea surged as much as 125 percent above its IPO price on its KOSDAQ debut on Thursday before surrendering much of its gains. Its shares traded at 21,500 won (US$16.08) in after-hours trading around 4:30 p.m., up 40.52 percent from their IPO price of 15,300 won. The stock opened at 30,350 won and climbed to an early high of 34,500 won, more than double its offering price, before retreating to a session low of 20,200 won. Heavy dema

ASIA Insight

• US visa refusals raise concerns over bilateral alliance SEOUL, October 29 (AJP) - The recent refusal of a U.S. visa to a senior South Korean lawmaker has raised fresh concerns about the bilateral alliance, with lawmakers across the political spectrum and a U.S. security expert offering sharply differing views on what the incident means for relations between the two allies. The controversy began on Wednesday when Rep. Jin Seong-joon of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), chairman of the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, disclosed that by Lee Jung-woo
• Guryong becomes no-man's land. What of those who called it home? SEOUL, October 28 (AJP) - A shantytown, others may call it. For those who stayed as their neighbors moved away, Guryong Village was home — a place where lives had taken root, however fragile the walls around them. By dawn Wednesday, fire had consumed swaths of the settlement tucked into Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district. It took nearly 13 hours to put out the flames. What would become of the lives they had uprooted was far less certain. One man in his 70s had been asleep after taki by Joonha Yoo

AJP Watch

• Seoul stocks stumble as record chip earnings fail to lift sentiment SEOUL, October 29 (AJP) - South Korea's stock market has turned bullish again, with renewed foreign buying and more than 90 trillion won (US$67.33 billion) in cash held in brokerage accounts raising hopes for a recovery. Yet the KOSPI slipped back below 6,000 on Thursday as retail investors remained wary of taking on more risk after last month's sharp selloff. The benchmark KOSPI closed 1.24 percent lower at 5,937.66 points on Thursday, a day after surging 6.63 percent to 6,012.44. The
• AJP On-site: Korean biotech gets hands-on in AI's shadow SEOUL, October 28 (AJP) - A glove at the Samsung Bioepis booth turned a reporter's fingers stiff as plaster at BIX 2026 in Seoul on Wednesday. The knuckles would barely bend. The glove simulates the difficulty of moving hands affected by severe rheumatoid arthritis. Even with it on, pulling the cap off the company's pen-type injector took just a flick of the thumb. Pressed against a silicone skin model, the device released its spring-loaded needle with a sharp click. "Patients wi

AJP Focus

• AI boom boosts Big Tech earnings, but rising costs raise questions SEOUL, October 30 (AJP) - America's tech giants are seeing a surge in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) computing, with cloud businesses gaining momentum at Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. However, their massive spending on data centers and other infrastructure has raised questions about how quickly they can turn those investments into profits. The latest earnings from the three cloud providers, alongside Meta Platforms and chipmaker Intel, show how the AI boom is reshaping the techno
• Samsung's HBM strides intensify AI memory race SEOUL, October 29 (AJP) -The extraordinary third-quarter earnings of the world's three largest memory chipmakers suggest the artificial intelligence (AI) memory race is only heating up, with latecomer Samsung Electronics making rapid strides against frontrunner SK hynix and U.S. rival Micron Technology. The bigger question is how long the industry can sustain operating margins approaching 80 percent. The profitability is staggering. SK hynix delivered an operating margin of 79.7 percent in