Category: K-Now

LG Electronics is sending its LG Professional commercial washers and dryers to Schilling, a German laundry-solutions specialist. Deliveries start in November 2026. Schilling distributes and installs equipment for laundromats and coin-operated laundries around Germany, and the deal is part of LG's broader push to grow its business-customer (B2B) sales in Europe.

The lineup is built on a package of technologies LG calls AI Core Tech. The AI estimates the weight of each load and sets the water amount and drying conditions to match, which LG says cuts cycle time and water and power use. The drum spins about 18 times per second to wring out moisture and shorten drying, and a gyro sensor detects lopsided loads and corrects them on its own to reduce vibration and noise.

In commercial laundry, buyers care about performance and energy efficiency, but also about whether the machines keep running reliably after installation and how good the maintenance is. LG called Germany a key European market, with heavy laundry demand from hotels, hospitals and industrial sites, and read the deal as a sign that local operators value both its products and its service. LG's commercial washer sales in Europe grew about 20% in January-September compared with the same period last year.

LG also worked to get in front of more local customers. It took part in Expo Detergo, a laundry industry trade show held once every four years, which opened October 23 in Milan, and set up a booth of about 90 sq m (roughly 970 sq ft), more than double the size of its booth at the previous edition. On display were machines in the 10-30 kg (22-66 lb) class, a product that cleans wool and silk garments with water and a dedicated detergent, and Laundry Crew, a management service with remote control and error alerts.

Expansion is continuing elsewhere too. In North America, LG more than doubled this year's shipments to CSC ServiceWorks, the region's top player, compared with last year, and in Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam it is strengthening partnerships with local distribution channels. Son Chang-woo, head of LG's Living Solutions business unit, said the company aims to grow quickly in the commercial laundry market.

According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures posted on the Bank of Korea's economic statistics system, South Korea ran a current account surplus of about $116.6 billion in the second quarter. Among the 36 major economies that have reported numbers for the quarter, only China did better, at about $193.7 billion. Germany came in at about $52.3 billion and Japan at about $50.6 billion.

Add those two together and you get about $102.9 billion, which leaves Korea ahead by roughly $13.7 billion. Since 1996, the first year all three countries' quarterly data can be compared side by side, this is the first time Korea has outpaced Germany and Japan combined. Korea's surplus was more than four times last year's Q2 level of about $28.4 billion. Over the same period, Germany's grew just 11.9% and Japan's just 5.0%.

The reason is chips. Semiconductor exports in Q2 came to about $113.9 billion, roughly 2.8 times the level a year earlier. In the third quarter, the growth rate accelerated further, to about 219%. The momentum carried through: in July and August alone, Korea's surplus was about $88.2 billion, topping the roughly $80.8 billion that Germany and Japan posted together.

In its October World Economic Outlook, the IMF projected Korea's 2026 full-year surplus at about $421.9 billion. That ranks second among 190 economies, behind only China, and is up three spots from fifth place last year. In its economic assessment on October 22, the Bank of Korea said strong chip exports should push the annual figure past its earlier forecast of about $450 billion.

The medium-term outlook looks different, though. The IMF projects the surplus will fall to about $295.7 billion in 2029 and about $177.5 billion in 2031. The Hankyoreh, a Korean daily, reported that the forecast rests on analysis that chip exports have leaned more on rising prices than on volume, and that rivals such as China are expected to expand supply.

The trend started with 'NEON' by A2O LITE, a multinational girl group that debuted on the 13th of this month. The song, released by A2O Entertainment under producer Lee Soo-man, hit the top of Korea's music charts right after release. Its hook, 'Neon and beyond,' sounds like 'mihon-aen-bihon' (roughly, 'unmarried and unmarried') when read with Korean pronunciation, and the parody videos picked up that name.

The swapped videos feature everyone from Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to agency producers, TV personalities, pets and cartoon characters. Sunny of Girls' Generation posted her own version featuring producers Lee Soo-man and Yoo Young-jin, and it passed 8 million views. Overseas, a video of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang re-creating a Michael Jackson stage performance came out on the 4th and racked up around 6 million views on Chinese platform Bilibili alone. Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared it with a joke about memory prices.

The go-to tool for these clips is Higgsfield's Genjutsu. Users upload a source video of up to 30 seconds plus a photo of a person, pick a feature, and the cast, outfits and background change while the dance moves and camera work stay put. A 15-second video costs a little over $5, so people with no editing skills can easily copy the trend. Some hospitals and small businesses have also been spotted using similar swapped videos for promotion on social media.

The problem is that this ease of use comes with side effects. Romain Gavras, who directed the music video 'Storm,' told media outlet Vulture he felt sad when person-swapped copies of the video started circulating, after he'd spent two months preparing 66 dancers and shooting multiple takes. He added that the trend could make even good work look frivolous. Consent from the people being swapped in is another issue. In August, TV personality Lee Ji-hye said she would take legal action after fake food ads using her face spread online.

Rules are starting to catch up. On Oct. 14, Korea's Intellectual Property Office announced it would handle digital replicas such as AI-made faces and voices under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and create grounds for criminal penalties for unauthorized commercial use. Kim Yong-sun, the agency's head, said enforcement matters as much as the rules themselves and promised to build an enforcement system suited to the AI era.

At the center of the deal is Nvidia's Holoscan Sensor Bridge (HSB), a data-transfer technology for sensors. Normally, what a camera or sensor picks up passes through the central processor (CPU) before reaching the graphics processor (GPU) that handles AI computing. HSB skips that detour and sends the data straight through. Less waiting in the middle means less time between a robot or self-driving car seeing what's in front of it and deciding what to do.

LG Innotek showed camera modules and a combined vision system built on the technology at the event. The company thinks the payoff will be biggest for robots, which have to react in real time when a person or obstacle suddenly moves. Next, it plans to apply the same approach to the vision devices that serve as a humanoid's eyes and to the sensing tech used in its hands.

LG Innotek built its name on smartphone camera parts and has been pushing that optical design know-how into mobility and robotics. On the self-driving side, it formed a strategic relationship last year with U.S. lidar maker Aeva, and this year it began development work with Applied Intuition and Kakao Mobility. In robotics, it is co-developing components with Boston Dynamics, and it is reportedly also in mass production of camera modules for a North American customer.

CEO Moon Hyuk-soo called the collaboration a chance to introduce the company's differentiated multi-sensor technology to the global market. LG Innotek wants to be a one-stop supplier that covers not just camera sensing but also communications components and semiconductor substrates, and it says it intends to get to the physical AI market first.

The Korea Customs Service released preliminary export and import figures for the first 20 days of October on Wednesday. Exports came to about $61.6 billion, up more than $30 billion from the same point last year. It's the biggest total for this stretch of any October on record.

The engine was semiconductors. Chip exports reached about $27.5 billion, more than triple last year's figure. That pushed chips to 44.7% of all exports, up from 28.4% a year earlier. Computer peripherals jumped more than 400%, and petroleum products, passenger cars and steel products all grew by double digits or more.

One caveat: this year's window had more working days. It counted 13, versus 10.5 last year, a gap of 2.5 days. Even so, average daily exports rose 65.9% to about $4.74 billion, topping September's previous record of roughly $4.6 billion.

By destination, exports to China reached about $16.7 billion and exports to the US about $10.8 billion, each up in the 150% range. Shipments to Vietnam, the European Union and Taiwan also grew. Imports rose 42.8% to about $47.1 billion, with chips, crude oil, gas and machinery all higher. With exports far outpacing imports, the surplus came to about $14.5 billion.

Cumulative exports from January through Oct. 20 stand at roughly $876 billion, leaving about $124 billion to reach the $1 trillion mark. If the current pace holds, forecasters expect Korea to top $1 trillion in annual exports for the first time ever before the year is out.

Vogue broke the news first, and EJAE followed up by posting photos from the day on her Instagram. The images show the couple in a white wedding gown and a tuxedo, smiling in front of guests, sharing a kiss, and dressed in traditional Korean wedding attire.

Stage28 stands on land where Shin Young-kyun once lived. Today it's home to the Shin Young-kyun Arts and Culture Foundation. In her Vogue interview, EJAE recalled that her grandparents lived there when she was young, and she still remembers playing in the garden for hours and walking the hill behind the house with her grandfather. One outlet reported that the venue also hosted her brother's wedding, but other outlets haven't confirmed that detail.

Reports point to a packed schedule as the reason for the change in date and location. After the success of "KPop Demon Hunters," EJAE has been busy with promotions and award-show appearances. Media accounts say the couple chose Seoul because it let them honor her Korean roots and family memories. According to some reports, the event was kept low-key and family-focused, with no public announcement.

The two first met in 2017 at a session set up for music work. They stayed creative collaborators before becoming a couple, and got engaged in June last year. EJAE is a songwriter and singer who trained at SM Entertainment, one of Korea's biggest K-pop agencies. She co-wrote, composed and sang the film's signature track "Golden," which won the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media. Her credits also include K-pop hits like Red Velvet's "Psycho" and aespa's "Drama."

While going through the list of compensation-eligible books posted on the copyright settlement website for the Anthropic lawsuit, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea found 21 works by Korean authors. The institute has since notified the authors and explained the damage and their options for relief. Authors on the list include Han Kang, Hwang Sok-yong, Kim Young-ha, Shin Kyung-sook, Kim Ae-ran, Kim Soom and Hwang Sun-mi. The titles are English translations of novels such as "Please Look After Mom," "Your Republic Is Calling You" and "The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly."

Anthropic faced a class action in the U.S. from authors and publishers over allegations that it illegally downloaded copyrighted works while training its chatbot, Claude. The court recognized infringement of roughly 500,000 works, and the case ended in July when Anthropic agreed to pay a settlement. The total is about $1.5 billion, or around 2 trillion won. That works out to roughly $3,000 per work.

According to some reports, the U.S. court found that using books to train AI is itself fair use under copyright law. But it did not extend that protection to the pirated copies Anthropic downloaded from piracy sites and kept to build its training library. The litigation also showed that Anthropic downloaded large volumes of e-book files from pirate sites.

The institute says it will work with copyright organizations to help authors get fair compensation, and will support legal action if needed. It is reportedly preparing detailed measures to help with claims. To actually get paid, authors must take part in the formal claims process themselves.

On October 16, President Trump took the stage at a rally in Dalton, Georgia, and pointed to foreign companies expanding their factories in the U.S. One example, he said, was Hyundai, which he had just heard is putting about $560 million into its West Point plant. He then argued that the economy is humming under Republican leadership.

The details of that investment come from the state. On October 8, Gov. Brian Kemp's office put out a press release saying Hyundai Transys is expanding its West Point manufacturing base. The plan includes modernizing equipment at the currently operating Plants 1 and 2, plus building a third plant.

The state expects the expansion to boost capacity for electrified powertrains used in hybrid vehicles. It also adds 320 new jobs, and the company plans to hire across a range of roles. The release said the move is meant to support the company's global automaker customers operating in North America.

South Korean business media reported that the head of Hyundai Transys' Georgia operation said the company has been investing in equipment, hiring and workforce training locally for more than 20 years. The executive reportedly called the new investment a milestone showing the company's long-term commitment to Georgia.

Preliminary figures from the Korea Customs Service (customs-clearance basis) show South Korea shipped about $26.1 billion worth of goods overseas in the first 10 days of October. That's more than double the same stretch last October, and a record for the period. One caveat: this year's window had 5.5 working days, two more than last year, which inflates the raw growth rate somewhat. On a per-day basis, exports averaged about $4.75 billion. That's still up 28.5% from last year, and still a record for the period.

Semiconductors did the heavy lifting. Chip exports reached about $12.2 billion, roughly 2.7 times last year's level and another record for the period. Chips made up 46.7% of all exports, 11.9 percentage points higher than at this point last year.

Most other categories grew too. Passenger cars and wireless communication devices rose by 80% and 60%, respectively, while steel products and refined petroleum products each climbed by about 40%. Ships were the notable exception, falling 13.4%. By market, shipments to China rose by roughly 167% and to the US by nearly 160%, while the European Union grew by about 120% and Vietnam by nearly 90%. China, the US and Vietnam together accounted for 52.3% of total exports.

Imports climbed as well. They totaled about $22.3 billion, up 65.5% from a year earlier. Gas imports more than doubled, crude oil rose 56.2% and semiconductors 66.7%, and combined energy imports (crude, gas and coal) were up 64.8%. Only refined petroleum product imports fell, by 10.9%. With exports outpacing imports, the trade surplus came to about $3.8 billion.

On Oct. 7, Samsung Electronics' DS division told employees exactly how its special management bonus will be calculated and when it will be paid. Labor and management agreed on the program last May. It stacks on top of the existing excess-profit bonus (OPI) rather than replacing it, and there is no ceiling on the payout rate. Of the pool, 40% is split across the whole DS division, while the other 60% is divvied up by business-unit performance. Shared corporate teams get a payout rate of roughly 70% of what the memory side gets.

Payment is set for late March to early April, after next year's regular shareholder meeting. Tax comes out first at the top bracket rate of 45%, which becomes 49.5% once local income tax is added. What's left is paid in Samsung shares instead of cash, with the share count calculated from the stock price on payout day. Employees can sell one-third of the shares immediately. The remainder is split in half, and those portions can be sold only after one year and two years.

The headline estimate comes from the Super-Enterprise Union. Using brokerage forecasts, the union calculated what an employee earning a bit over 80 million won a year would get before tax, OPI included: about 750 million won in the memory unit, 530 million won in shared corporate teams, and 240 million won in the System LSI and foundry units. Those are the union's own projections, so actual payouts may differ depending on DS results. Samsung preliminarily reported Q3 revenue of 195 trillion won and operating profit of 107.4 trillion won, the first time a Korean company has topped 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit.

Against that backdrop, a post appeared on Blind, an anonymous app for office workers, from a verified Samsung employee identified as A, in their early 30s. A said their wife also works in the memory unit. They wrote that after about five years as a dual-income couple, the home they bought for 800 million won is now worth 1.2 billion won, and they are preparing to move up to a home in the upper 1-billion-won range with a company loan. Their two bonuses together would top 3 billion won, they wrote, and if things play out as expected, they figure they could quit within five years.