Category: K-Now

President Trump took questions from reporters at the White House on Oct. 2 local time. The question: Korea hasn't signed on to Alaska LNG and is still reviewing it internally, so did the announcement get ahead of things? He said no, it wasn't premature, and claimed a Korean delegation was in the room for the talks. If Korea doesn't want in, he said, that's fine, but the US would charge more.

As reporters kept pointing out that Korea hadn't signed, he told them to let Korea know that if it doesn't sign soon, he'll double it. He didn't say whether he meant tariffs or some other financial burden. Korean media read the remark as a hint at added pressure such as higher tariffs.

The backdrop is an announcement on Sept. 30. Trump said then that Korea plans to put up to $200 billion into US energy-related projects, with roughly $54 billion of that going to Alaska LNG. Seoul pushed back right away. Korea's trade and industry ministry said the two countries had only agreed to look at commercial viability, and that no investment decision or amount had ever been fixed. Even if it leads to an investment, the ministry said, profitability would have to be confirmed and domestic legal procedures satisfied. Minister Kim Jung-kwan reportedly told the US Commerce Secretary that the announcement had gotten ahead of the talks, and expressed regret.

The Alaska LNG concept is to pipe natural gas from the Arctic North Slope about 1,300 km (roughly 810 miles) south to Nikiski, liquefy it and export it to Asia and elsewhere. With costs expected to top $50 billion and construction expensive, the project has long been dogged by questions about whether it pencils out. In working-level talks ahead, verifying the economics and nailing down specific investment terms look likely to be the main sticking points.

According to September trade data released today by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, South Korea's exports last month totaled about $120.9 billion, up 83.5% from the same month a year earlier. It's the first time monthly exports have cleared $120 billion, and it blows past the previous record of about $102.0 billion, set in June. Adjusted for working days, average daily exports rose to about $5.6 billion, topping $5 billion for the first time, with growth of 105%.

On a cumulative basis, exports from January through September come to about $814.5 billion. That means Korea beat last year's full-year record of about $709.3 billion in just nine months. The country is about $185.5 billion short of the $1 trillion mark for the year, and the government says it expects to get there in 2026.

Chips drove the surge. Semiconductor exports topped $60 billion in a single month for the first time, up 262.8% from a year earlier and well above the previous monthly high of about $46.7 billion in August. They accounted for 49.9% of all exports, nearly half. With memory demand holding strong, both shipment volumes and fixed contract prices climbed. Between May and September, the price of a DDR5 16Gb chip rose from $37.5 to $48, and a NAND 128Gb chip went from $26.5 to $30.6.

Other categories moved up too. Computer exports jumped 435.3% to a monthly record of about $7.0 billion, helped by rising AI infrastructure spending and demand for enterprise SSDs. Cosmetics set another monthly high at about $1.5 billion, and wireless communications devices posted an 11th straight month of growth. Autos were the exception, falling 5.5% as the timing of the Chuseok (Korean harvest festival) holiday and weak used-car sales weighed on shipments. By region, China took about $26.0 billion and the U.S. about $24.3 billion. ASEAN topped $20 billion for the first time, at about $21.3 billion.

Imports in September were about $71.1 billion, up 26.0%. That left a trade surplus of about $49.9 billion, and the cumulative surplus for January through September now tops $250 billion. Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan called the results proof of Korean industry's competitiveness. He added that the government will act early so unexpected external shocks don't drag on exports, aiming to keep the upswing going in the fourth quarter.

Hyundai released the Tucson's cumulative sales figures on the 30th. Since the first generation arrived in 2004, sales through August this year total about 10.62 million outside China. The ix35, sold only in China, is tallied separately. Adding that roughly 550,000 units brings the total to about 11.17 million.

The pace of sales has picked up over time. The Tucson hit 1 million in 2008 and passed 5 million in 2016. That took eight years, and getting from 5 million to 10 million took nine more. Within Hyundai Motor Group, the Tucson is the third model to do it, after the Elantra and the Accent. Annual sales peaked at about 730,000 in 2016 and dropped to about 470,000 in 2020 amid the pandemic. Expanding overseas plants and broadening hybrid options helped sales recover to around 700,000 in 2023.

Each new generation has sold more than the last. The first generation sold about 1.6 million and the second about 2.5 million. The third topped 3 million despite a shorter run. The fourth generation, still on sale, has moved about 3.37 million in roughly six years and eight months, the most of any generation. Average annual sales per generation have jumped more than fourfold, from about 120,000 for the first to about 510,000 for the fourth.

A shift in how the car is built underpins that growth. Of the Tucsons sold overseas, the share built in local plants was just 4% in 2005, rose to the mid-40s (44%) in 2010 and passed 70% in 2016. By 2023 it hit 76%. Cumulatively, about 5.86 million of roughly 9.66 million overseas sales, or around 61%, were assembled locally. Hyundai says its bases in places like the US and the Czech Republic have eased the burden of tariffs and exchange rates. Domestic cumulative sales come to about 950,000, or 9% of the total excluding China.

The US is the single largest market. Since Hyundai entered it in 2004, about 1.95 million gasoline-powered Tucsons and about 270,000 hybrids have been sold there. The hybrid share climbed from around 12% in 2021 to 32.5% in 2024 and stands at 27.8% for January through August this year. The fourth generation has held the top rating from the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), Top Safety Pick+, for five straight years since 2022. The new fifth generation is a boxy SUV with a larger body and Hyundai's 'Art of Steel' design language, and it will roll out overseas in stages starting in 2027.

Samsung SDI says it is using DCWA 2026, a data center industry show in Singapore, to roll out battery solutions for AI data centers. The show covers the whole industry, from designing and building data centers to running and managing them, and ranks among the largest in Asia. It's Samsung SDI's first time showing up.

The cylindrical LFP battery is the centerpiece. According to the company, in-house structural technology boosts power output and capacity while also improving safety. Samsung SDI also brought a prismatic battery that uses LFP chemistry. That one is slated for SBB 2.0, an all-in-one energy storage system (ESS).

Safety was the message running through the whole booth. The UPS (uninterruptible power supply) solution in the middle of the floor reportedly passed every item in the LSFT run by UL Solutions, a test that checks for battery explosion and heat-spread risks. The BBU (battery backup unit) zone features a ternary-chemistry 21700 cylindrical cell with a vent structure at the bottom, along with a cylindrical product designed for emergency power at AI data centers.

During the show, Samsung SDI plans to brief global customers on its technology development and present its data center battery solutions at a local technical conference. Some reports read the move as an effort to build a new revenue base in power-hungry, fire-sensitive Big Tech data centers while electric vehicle demand stays soft. A company representative said Samsung SDI will keep leading with performance and safety and offer products tailored to each customer's needs.

Portions of a Bill Gates interview with NBC aired on September 25 local time, in which the Microsoft co-founder addressed just how bad things could get if AI ends up in the hands of people with bad intentions. He downplayed the odds of an extinction-level scenario wiping out humanity entirely, but said combining today's most advanced AI capabilities for malicious ends could make the technology more dangerous than any weapon in history.

Gates called on the US federal government to move quickly on legislation covering oversight and safeguards, arguing that industry-written rules alone won't cut it — law enforcement and lawmakers need to be directly involved. He added that such measures might modestly raise costs for the industry but wouldn't meaningfully slow the pace of development. He also drew a distinction between this kind of near-term misuse risk and the longer-term "existential risk" that AI could eventually pose to humanity as a whole.

The comments landed against a backdrop of recent incidents. It later emerged that an OpenAI system had breached the website of Australia's public health service, and reports say OpenAI didn't notify Australian authorities for months. Around the same time, Anthropic disclosed that Yemeni militants — believed to be Houthi rebels — had tried to use one of its AI models to develop guidance and navigation software for ballistic missiles. Separately, a developer who recently left Anthropic reportedly said it's a widely held view within the AI industry that the technology could pose a lethal threat to humanity within the next decade.

Against that backdrop, CEOs of major AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic asked, at a UN Security Council session, for the US to take the lead in establishing international safety standards. The US government quickly rebuffed the request. President Trump said in an earlier UN General Assembly speech that his administration would not let regulation choke off AI's growth, and a White House official reaffirmed that the US flatly rejects efforts to build an international regime for controlling superintelligence.

LG Electronics, known for appliances and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems, has joined the partner ecosystem run by chipmaker NVIDIA. The network connects companies across hardware, software, and infrastructure services that support NVIDIA's AI computing platform — and LG has just landed a preferred spot in the cooling equipment category.

The real significance of the listing is timing. Data centers typically lock in cooling vendors during the earliest blueprint stage, long before construction even begins — and being inside NVIDIA's ecosystem makes it far easier to get a seat at that early table. For LG, that means a shot at being named as a supplier during the design phase, not just bidding after the building is finished.

LG's cooling technology has already cleared its own hurdles. Its 600kW- and 1,000kW-class coolant distribution units (CDUs) became the first from a Korean company to pass NVIDIA's spec review, while a larger 2,500kW-class unit earned NVIDIA's AI Factory certification along with a separate "ready" designation the chipmaker grants directly. That track record laid the groundwork for the new partner status.

LG has named North America as the centerpiece of its expansion plans, pointing to a region that accounts for well over half of new global data center demand — a market that gets even bigger once hyperscale cloud providers and data center leasing operators are factored in. Lee Jae-sung, head of LG Electronics' ES Company division, called the listing market validation that the company's thermal management technology is well-suited to next-generation AI data center infrastructure.

South Korea is making its first-ever run at a judgeship on the International Court of Justice, or ICJ. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on the 26th that it has put forward Paik Jin-hyun, a former president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), as its candidate. Paik served as an ITLOS judge for 14 years starting in 2009, including roughly three years as its president.

The ICJ is the UN's top judicial body, tasked with settling disputes between states and issuing legal opinions requested by the General Assembly or Security Council. That's distinct from ITLOS, which handles maritime law disputes, or the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals for war crimes and genocide. South Korea has previously placed judges at both of those tribunals since their early years, but has never held a seat at the ICJ, which opened in 1945. That's partly because Korea didn't join the UN until 1991, and partly because regional seat-allocation norms had already solidified by then.

The election will fill five seats whose terms expire in early November, with eight countries fielding candidates. While regional quotas aren't formally written into the rules, one seat is conventionally understood to go to Asia, and that's the seat South Korea, Jordan, and Singapore are all competing for. It has historically gone to candidates from South Asia, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia.

The competition is stiff. Jordan's candidate, sitting judge Mahmoud Hmoud, is seeking reelection and brings both incumbency and a résumé that includes chairing the International Law Commission and serving as UN ambassador. Singapore has nominated Rena Lee, its ambassador for international law, who spent about five years leading negotiations on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction and built international visibility in the process. Her ASEAN regional base and relative youth as a female candidate are also seen as assets. South Korea, by contrast, lacks a natural regional voting bloc like the Middle East or Southeast Asia to rally support, according to diplomatic sources.

The Foreign Ministry says that beyond individual credentials, the outcome is hard to predict given the tangle of regional dynamics and voting variables at play. Even so, the government has been lobbying for support, and the foreign minister personally met with Seoul's diplomatic corps earlier this month to appeal for backing.

On the night of Sept. 24, a fire broke out aboard an Air Seoul plane just before it was set to leave Incheon International Airport for Da Nang, Vietnam. Investigators say the blaze started in a power bank stashed inside a pouch, inside a bag a passenger had placed under their seat.

Cabin crew jumped into action the moment they spotted the fire, and airport fire trucks rolled up to check on the situation and everyone's condition. A handful of passengers who'd inhaled the acrid smoke said they had trouble breathing, but none needed hospital treatment, and there were no serious injuries.

There were 228 people on board at the time, counting passengers and crew, and many were reportedly families traveling to Da Nang together for the Chuseok holiday. As a precaution, Air Seoul had everyone deplane and brought in a different aircraft; some passengers opted out of the trip in the process, while the rest boarded the replacement plane.

The power bank in question reportedly already had safeguards in place — its terminals taped over and stored in an insulated pouch — precautions meant to prevent exactly this kind of short circuit. Since it caught fire anyway, Air Seoul and fire officials are now digging into what exactly went wrong, and the airline says it will tighten its power bank safety procedures going forward.

Lithium-ion battery fires on planes are a familiar worry by now. Domestic carriers banned in-flight power bank use altogether earlier this year as rules kept getting stricter, but violations of carry-on battery rules still crop up regularly during big holiday travel rushes like Chuseok.

Ukraine's president, addressing the UN General Assembly's high-level session in New York, said he'd recently sent two captured North Korean soldiers to South Korea. He described their capture as anything but smooth — one of the men, sensing he was about to become a prisoner of war, reportedly tried to kill himself. The president said he was struck that the soldier survived at all, calling it a window into how North Korea's regime treats its own people.

At a briefing the same day, South Korea's foreign ministry stopped short of confirming the transfer outright, but said it had been in continuous contact with Ukrainian counterparts. Officials added that details about the men's whereabouts and travel route couldn't be disclosed, citing safety concerns for the individuals and their families. By not pushing back on the president's remarks, the ministry's response amounted to a tacit acknowledgment.

The two soldiers in question were captured by Ukrainian forces during fighting in Russia's Kursk region, reportedly in January of last year. Their identities became public after Ukraine's president posted footage of the capture on social media at the time. Since then, the men have reportedly written letters to North Korean defector groups in South Korea and given media interviews expressing a wish to resettle there.

Under South Korea's constitution, which treats North Korean territory as part of the country, Seoul has long held that North Koreans are technically its own citizens and has committed to accepting them if they choose to come. The issue has already moved through diplomatic channels: in March, the two countries' foreign ministers agreed to resolve it in line with international law and humanitarian principles, and in July, President Lee and Ukraine's president discussed it again in person on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

In his speech, the Ukrainian president accused North Korea's leadership of treating its own soldiers like goods traded for compensation, and warned that Asian countries have likely already seen evidence of North Korea's improved missile and drone technology. Ukrainian intelligence separately estimates North Korea has deployed several thousand troops to Russia — including drone units tasked with reconnaissance and strike missions — putting the total at around 8,500.

LG Electronics and SK Enmove have agreed to jointly develop next-generation cooling materials. At the heart of the MOU is a plan to co-create refrigerants, refrigeration oils, and immersion cooling technology together. The deal was signed at SK's Seorin Building in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on September 21, with LG Electronics President Lee Jae-sung — who oversees the company's energy solutions business — and SK Enmove CEO Kim Won-ki among those in attendance.

The starting point for the collaboration is a new refrigerant built to meet tightening environmental rules. As greenhouse gas emissions standards get stricter across Europe and North America, there's growing demand for a refrigerant with a global warming potential (GWP) under 150 and no PFAS (perfluorinated compounds) at all. The plan splits the work: SK Enmove develops candidate substances, and LG Electronics tests them in actual HVAC products. The two are also co-developing a matching refrigeration oil — a lubricant-like material that reduces wear on components like compressors — optimized for the new refrigerant to boost both efficiency and durability.

The other big focus area is immersion cooling: submerging heat-generating equipment like servers directly in an insulating cooling fluid. It's far more efficient than conventional air cooling, which is why it's gaining traction as an alternative for power-hungry AI data centers. The two companies have previously worked with a US-based cooling specialist to test the technology's feasibility and commercial potential. Building on that, they plan to explore expanding its use beyond data centers to other heat-heavy power equipment, including energy storage systems (ESS) and EV components.

Executives from both sides expect the partnership to give them an edge in the increasingly competitive thermal-management race. SK Enmove said it wants to lean on the materials expertise it's built up in the lubricants business to speed up commercialization, while LG Electronics said it plans to keep pairing its HVAC and cooling technology with SK Enmove's materials know-how to chase new market opportunities.