• South Koreans must choose their words under new online rules SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - South Koreans are being forced to watch their language and behave online as amendments to the Information and Communications Network Act take effect on July 7.
• Stock investing in Korea now means buying Samsung and SK hynix SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) — The hotter South Korea's stock market becomes, the narrower it grows. Investing in Korean equities is now synonymous with owning Samsung Electronics or SK hynix. "People don't ask whether you own stocks anymore.
• From Starbucks to teen baseball, May 18 mockery carries a dear price SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) -Starbucks' May 18 controversy continues to reverberate across South Korea, with the country's largest coffee chain under Shinsegae Group paying for the blunder through a dent in sales while a Seoul high school baseball team is seeking forgiveness from a rival school in Gwangju.
• Court terminates Homeplus rehabilitation bid SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - The Seoul Bankruptcy Court terminated the corporate rehabilitation proceedings of Homeplus on Friday, putting South Korea's second-largest retail chain on a path toward bankruptcy unless a buyer steps forward in the coming weeks. Rehabilitation Division 4 of the court, headed by Jung Jun-young, president of the Seoul Bankruptcy Court, who presided over the case, ruled that the rev
• Korea's FX reserves edge up in June as ranking slips SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) -South Korea's foreign exchange reserves rose slightly in June, helped by a stronger dollar, but its global ranking slipped one notch, reflecting the cost of defending a stubbornly weak won, central bank data showed Friday.
• Canada-led global defense bank may include South Korea SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - Canada plans to announce a group of about 10 countries expected to join a proposed global defense bank at next week’s NATO summit in Türkiye, with South Korea among the potential members, Reuters reported Thursday.

AJP Briefing

• Young South Koreans sour on Lee's housing policy SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) — More than half of young South Koreans are disgruntled with the current administration's housing policy amid sky-high rent prices. A survey released Friday by polling firm Korea Gallup showed that 46 percent of respondents viewed the President Lee Jae Myung administration's housing policy negatively, compared with 26 percent who viewed it positively. Negative sentiment was strongest among younger adults, with 56 percent of people in their 30s and 51 percent
• KOSPI rebounds 5.8 percent on chip rally SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - South Korean stocks staged their sharpest rebound of the year on Friday, as institutional buying and a fresh artificial intelligence catalyst for Samsung Electronics erased most of the previous session's rout in a single day. The benchmark KOSPI surged 5.8 percent to close at 8,088.3. The index added 440.3 points, recovering the bulk of Thursday's 7.9 percent plunge, as a report that Anthropic is in talks with Samsung Electronics to manufacture a custom AI chip r
• Korea's Lee heads to NATO summit as Seoul courts defense partners SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) -South Korean President Lee Jae Myung will travel to Türkiye and Mongolia next week for a five-day diplomatic swing aimed at expanding Seoul’s security, defense industry and supply chain partnerships, the presidential office said Friday. Lee will attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Ankara from July 7 to 8 before making a state visit to Mongolia from July 9 to 11, National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac said at a briefing at Cheong Wa Dae,
• Samsung defies chip rout as KOSPI sinks SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) -The Seoul market extended losses as foreign selloff continued Friday. Chip stocks were mixed. Samsung Electronics rose 1.6 percent to 290,500 won (about 188 dollars), while SK hynix fell 1.1 percent to 2,163,000 won (about 1,398 dollars). The KOSPI 2.18 percent to 7,281.39. The overnight catalyst was a US chip rout, where the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell as much as 6 percent, its worst two-session stretch since early June, as investors questioned stretched AI

ASIA Insight

• Korea-Japan weak currency coupling tells different stories SEOUL, July 02 (AJP) - For South Korean policymakers battling a persistently weak won, the culprit is relatively straightforward: heavy foreign selling of Korean equities and an insatiable domestic appetite for dollar-denominated assets. The picture is more puzzling in Japan. Despite record foreign buying of Japanese stocks this year, the yen has continued to languish near multi-decade lows, defying the conventional expectation that capital inflows should support a country's currency. The by Kim Yeon-jae
• China races past Japan, eyes 10 million car exports SEOUL, July 02 (AJP) - China is on pace to export nearly ten million vehicle units this year, according to global consulting firm AlixPartners' 23rd annual Global Automotive Outlook, released June 25. The expected export volume would be a jump from 7.1 million units in 2025, marking the fastest expansion yet for the Chinese automobile industry that, for most of its history, built cars almost entirely for its own drivers. For decades, exports were an afterthought in China's car industry. by Park Sae-jin

AJP Watch

• North Korea, DPRK, or Joseon? Seoul's naming dilemma SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - Defined by its neighbor "hostile state," South Korea is rethinking how to address North Korea. The Unification Ministry said Friday that growing calls to refer to North Korea by its official name are part of a broader process of building public consensus, as a linguistic debate over inter-Korean relations moves from academic and religious circles into the center of national politics. At issue is whether South Korea should continue using the term "North Kor
• Tiny Seoul studio bets on brutal dungeon survival sim SEOUL, July 02 (AJP) - Battle games are familiar. Fantasy worlds are crowded. Escape-themed entertainment has faded from fashion. But blend dungeon crawling, settlement management and punishing survival together, and perhaps there is still room for something new. That is the wager of a six-person studio in Seoul. In a compact office tucked inside Seoul's Gasan Digital Complex, six desks sit shoulder to shoulder, three on each side of a narrow room. At one, a developer patiently places pix

AJP Focus

• Bond rally signals sobriety on Korea's economy – weak without chips SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - From the look of the sovereign bond market in July, South Korea's economy is running solidly on strong exports while inflation, despite energy shocks from the prolonged Gulf crisis, remains broadly contained around 3 percent, suggesting the Bank of Korea may need no more than one additional rate hike from the current 2.50 percent. Compared with the wild swings in equities and the won's slide to near three-decade lows, South Korea's bond market has remained rem
• Korea's chip republic meets the law of semiconductor cycles SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) -The market has finally started asking the uncomfortable question. For the last 18 months, investors treated AI memory as a one-way trade. High-bandwidth memory (HBM) shortages, exploding AI server demand and the near-duopoly of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix turned South Korea into the center of the global AI hardware story. After Seoul unveiled a string of government-backed semiconductor mega projects swelling above $1 trillion across Yongin, Honam and Chungcheong, inv