• Korean retail flow suggests stock frenzy may be fizzling out SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) — Korean individual deposits at brokerage houses are thinning fast while overseas stock buying is also losing momentum, suggesting the retail stock frenzy may have peaked and the firepower that has so far sustained the KOSPI.
• LG Electronics Q2 profit beats estimates on HVAC growth, tariff gains SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - LG Electronics' second-quarter operating profit came in at an estimated 1.58 trillion won $1 billion), above the market consensus of 1.02 trillion won, according to the company on Tuesday.
• Newly uncovered U.S. military report identifies Dokdo as part of Korea after WWII SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - A newly uncovered U.S. military report has revealed that American authorities recognized Dokdo as part of Korea in 1948, offering fresh documentary evidence that could strengthen the historical basis for South Korea's sovereignty over the East Sea islets.
• Kia to retire 14-year-old K9 amid sagging demand for sedans SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) -Kia will retire its flagship K9 luxury sedan by the end of this year, industry officials and union sources said Monday.
• Korean households' stock and fund buying nears $40 bn in Q1 SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - South Korean households’ purchases of equity securities and investment fund shares nearly doubled to 61.4 trillion won ($40 billion) from 34 trillion won in the first quarter, the latest data underscoring the stock craze that gripped the country as investors watched the benchmark KOSPI surge in the first half. Foreign investors sold nearly the same amount, offloading a net 62.1 tr
• Npay launches venture capital investment platform SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - Npay, Naver's fintech arm, unveiled a new venture capital investment platform, aiming to bridge the gap between promising startups and investors and channel more "productive finance".

AJP Briefing

• KOSPI dives nearly 5% despite Samsung's record quarterly profit SEOUL, July 7 (AJP) - South Korea's benchmark KOSPI plunged 4.91 percent on Tuesday, even after Samsung Electronics posted its largest-ever quarterly operating profit. Investors saw the record earnings as a sign that the memory chip boom may have already peaked, sending the index down 395.02 points to close at 7,656.31. Samsung posted a preliminary second-quarter operating profit of 8.94 trillion won, a roughly 19-fold increase from a year earlier that exceeded the market consensus of 8.44
• Hyundai Motor Group maintains No. 7 in global EV sales SEOUL, July 7 (AJP) - Hyundai Motor Group ranked seventh globally in electric vehicle sales for the first five months of this year, according to data released by market researcher SNE Research on Tuesday. Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia sold a combined 303,000 electric vehicles including plug-in hybrids from January through May, up 24.3 percent from a year earlier to retain seventh place, narrowing the gap with sixth-ranked Chinese automaker Changan to 27,000 vehicles from 78,000 a year ear
• Won extends gains on second day of 24-hr FX trading SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - The Korean won strengthened further Tuesday, the second day of round-the-clock trading in the domestic foreign exchange market, even as foreign investors sold local stocks. As of 12:30 p.m. (0300 GMT), the won was hovering around 1,521 per dollar, up more than nine won from the previous daytime closing level. South Korea shifted its dollar-won spot market to a 24-hour trading system on Monday, allowing continuous trading from 6 a.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Saturday. The won'
• Korean households' stock and fund buying nears $40 bn in Q1, nearly matching foreign sales SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - South Korean households’ purchases of equity securities and investment fund shares nearly doubled to 61.4 trillion won ($40 billion) from 34 trillion won in the first quarter, the latest data underscoring the stock craze that gripped the country as investors watched the benchmark KOSPI surge in the first half. Foreign investors sold nearly the same amount, offloading a net 62.1 trillion won worth of Korean equities and investment funds, more than seven times the 8.5

ASIA Insight

• Hormuz oil shock splits Asian industry in two SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - South Korea's factories just lived through the most violent oil shock in history, and the strange part is that the country posted record exports while it happened. The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway carrying about a fifth of the world's oil, did not hit Asian industry evenly in the first half of 2026. It split it. Semiconductors sailed through on artificial intelligence demand, automobiles took a glancing blow, and petroche by Park Sae-jin
• Hyundai takes Asia's humanoid race beyond the dance floor SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - Hyundai Motor reclaimed the 500,000-won threshold Monday, rising 2 percent even as the broader market retreated, after its growing robotics portfolio quietly stole attention from investors otherwise fixated on Samsung Electronics' earnings guidance due the following day. Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid robot, owned by Hyundai Motor Group, showcased a series of football-inspired celebrations during halftime of the Brazil-Norway World Cup round-of-16 match at MetLif by Joonha Yoo

AJP Watch

• Korea's ruling party dominance wanes as young voters lose faith SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - On June 16, a woman in her 20s with an American flag wrapped around her waist chained herself to a tape-bound gate at Seoul's Olympic Handball Gymnasium, preventing police from reopening the venue after it had been sealed over a ballot-shortage controversy in the June 3 local elections. Some protesters hailed her as the "Joan of Arc of Olympic Park." The scene is no longer unusual. Increasingly, it is young people—not the elderly—taking to the st
• World Cup fiasco fells Chung Mong-gyu after 13 years atop KFA SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - South Korean football lost its most powerful figure Monday, eight days after losing its World Cup. Chung Mong-gyu resigned as president of the Korea Football Association, ending 13 years and five months in charge and completing the collapse that had already consumed his hand-picked national team coach, Hong Myung-bo, whose group-stage failure turned him into a national pariah and has now claimed the man who put him there. The scale of the failure explains the speed of t

AJP Focus

• The great shortfalls in the grand Honam chip project SEOUL, July 07 (AJP) - The devil is in the details, and South Korea's mammoth plan to create a second chipmaking epicenter in the industrially neglected southwest is drawing skepticism not only because of its astronomical 800 trillion won ($523 billion) price tag, but also because of the critical shortfalls money alone cannot solve. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have announced plans to build two next-generation fabs each in the Honam region, investing 400 trillion won apiece in what Pres
• Seoul's 24-hour FX market tests local banks' staffing capacity SEOUL, July 06 (AJP) - South Korea began round-the-clock foreign exchange trading on Monday, but while the country's largest lenders are relying on overseas dealing desks to cover the new hours, smaller regional banks say they are scrambling to find enough people to stay awake. "We need more staff, but there are limits to how quickly we can hire people for this," one foreign-exchange official at a regional bank told AJP on condition of anonymity. "We will probably introduce