Category: K-Now

Korea's decision not to send a warship to the Strait of Hormuz at Washington's request is back in the spotlight. Speaking to reporters at the White House on August 19 U.S. time, Trump said he wasn't happy when he learned Korea had turned the request down. It's the second day in a row he's brought it up — a day earlier he'd disclosed details of a call with President Lee Jae-myung while signaling his displeasure — and he again cited Korea's heavy reliance on the strait for oil imports as the basis for the ask.

President Lee responded the same day with a post on his own social media account. He reiterated that Korea's government has repeatedly signaled its willingness to help normalize passage through the strait alongside the international community, and said Seoul would keep working with Washington on meaningful contributions within the limits of domestic law and policy. He added that he looks forward to meeting Trump again soon in the United States.

In the same White House exchange, Trump also touched on his relationship with Kim Jong Un. He said Kim, unlike Korea's past leaders, has maintained a friendly rapport with him personally — but added he wasn't thrilled that large-scale U.S.-led military exercises targeting North Korea have continued despite that rapport. He said he doesn't expect any major crisis during the remainder of his term. Asked whether denuclearization remains the ultimate goal of restoring ties with Kim, he declined to give a direct answer.

Earlier that same morning, in separate remarks, Trump said North Korea possesses 57 formidable nuclear weapons and signaled he wants to meet Kim before the end of the year. It's the first time he's put a specific number on North Korea's arsenal, a move some read as breaking from Washington's longstanding official position of pursuing complete denuclearization. Trump met Kim three times during his first term without a major breakthrough, and North Korea has long insisted it won't return to talks unless it's recognized as a nuclear power.

SK Hynix's board just signed off on one of the biggest capital-return moves in Korean corporate history. The chipmaker will buy 3.3% of its own outstanding shares directly on the market and retire every one of them once the purchases wrap up, shrinking the total share count for good. At the previous day's closing price, the price tag comes to roughly 40 trillion won ($29 billion) — the largest treasury-stock cancellation by won amount ever announced by a company listed on Korea's stock exchange.

The buyback isn't the only lever SK Hynix is pulling. The company is also weighing an increase to its cash dividend, including both its regular payout and special dividends, with specifics on size and timing to be announced alongside third-quarter (July–September) earnings. On top of that, SK Hynix raised the floor on its shareholder-return policy, pledging to return at least half — up from a prior cap of "up to half" — of cumulative free cash flow over the next three years.

The timing traces back to a widening gap between fundamentals and share price. SK Hynix has been posting record quarterly earnings on the back of a red-hot memory-chip market, with net cash around 69 trillion won ($50 billion) as of the end of the second quarter — yet its stock has fallen more than 10% over the past month. The company said its business competitiveness, cash-generating power, and mid-to-long-term growth potential aren't fully reflected in the current share price, prompting it to move up a shareholder-return plan that was already in the works.

Still, some investors see room for more. Rivals in next-generation memory, U.S.-based Micron and SanDisk, have pledged to return all leftover cash — after operations and capital spending — to shareholders, making SK Hynix's move look comparatively modest by contrast. But with the exact dividend figures still unannounced, analysts say the full scope of the shareholder-return package will hinge on what the company reveals later this year.

Startling testimony has emerged in the criminal trial over technology leaks from Samsung Electronics to Chinese chipmaker CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies). Jeon, 56, a former Samsung Electronics researcher who was among the company's founding members, took the stand on August 11 before the Seoul Central District Court's 32nd Criminal Division (Presiding Judge Ryu Kyung-jin) and testified that CXMT's leadership had planned from the very beginning to build its products by absorbing Samsung's technology. According to his account, the company had no independent research division or production facilities when it was founded, and showed no real intent to develop its own technology.

Jeon also testified that the company's internal reporting structure differed depending on employees' country of origin. He said staff complained internally that reports written by Taiwanese employees were accepted at face value, while material from Korean employees was routinely dismissed. The information at issue in this case reportedly contains core details on 618 individual steps involved in DRAM manufacturing.

Jeon himself is one of the defendants in the case. After 28 years at Samsung Electronics, he moved to CXMT in 2016 and was accused of illegally passing along information related to Samsung's 18-nanometer DRAM process — technology the company spent 1.6 trillion won (about $1.2 billion) to develop. He received a heavy seven-year prison sentence in his own first-trial ruling this past April. Notably, he did not disclose evidence of organized corporate involvement during his own trial but changed his account when testifying in a co-defendant's case, raising questions about whether he'll offer further testimony once his appeal begins.

Prosecutors, who have been investigating since 2024, have indicted roughly a dozen development staff, including Jeon, on charges including leaking core national technology overseas. They believe CXMT grew rapidly by recruiting former Samsung employees and absorbing core technology, and that this pipeline of expertise helped the company become the first Chinese firm to mass-produce 10-nanometer-class DRAM in 2023. As a result, within roughly a decade of its founding, the company climbed to fourth place worldwide in DRAM market share, behind Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.

Legal experts say that if this testimony is accepted as fact, it could serve as evidence for Samsung to pursue trade-secret claims. That's fueling talk of filing a complaint against CXMT with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), built on the record from Korea's domestic investigation and trial.

Moody's latest report puts this year's South Korea GDP growth forecast at 3.5% — nearly double the 1.8% figure the ratings agency was using just six months ago, after two rounds of upward revisions. The agency pointed to one main driver: a semiconductor boom that's lasting longer than almost anyone expected.

The report says there's no real competitor that can replace Korean firms in the premium memory chip market, and that this supply edge should hold at least through mid-2027. Moody's also flagged that Korea's goods exports jumped more than 50% year-over-year in the January-July period, crediting the explosive growth of the chip sector as the main force behind that surge.

The government's push to build out semiconductors, AI data centers and physical AI also drew a mention. Moody's described it as an effort to build new growth engines while easing Korea's heavy concentration around the greater Seoul area, calling it a consistent policy response to shifting technology trends. If it goes smoothly, the agency said, the strategy could also boost productivity and potential growth over time.

On the fiscal side, the upgraded growth outlook and higher-than-expected tax revenue are expected to bring this year's budget deficit in slightly below target, near 3.8% of GDP. Still, the report warned that without structural reforms, rising mandatory spending tied to an aging population, defense and security costs, and investment needed to keep exports competitive could squeeze the budget over the long run.

Moody's currently rates Korea at Aa2, the third-highest tier on its scale. The agency stressed this report is part of a routine review and doesn't signal any change — or pending change — to that credit rating.

Notably, the report wasn't written by the U.S. Trade Representative's office but by the White House's own Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and it carries the blunt title 'The Great Transshipment Scam.' Its central claim: Chinese goods hit with steep U.S. tariffs are increasingly routed through third countries, where minimal assembly, repackaging, or relabeling is enough to disguise their origin before they enter the U.S. market. The report sorts at-risk countries into three tiers based on industrial structure and reliance on Chinese supply chains, placing nations with both large U.S. export bases and heavy China-linked shipping volume — where legitimate trade and risky shipments can blend together — into the top tier.

Samsung SDI on Aug. 11 laid out two separate moves in its relationship with GM: a fresh R&D agreement on next-gen EV batteries, and a restructuring of the ownership behind a jointly built battery plant.

Under the new research pact, engineers from both companies will keep refining prismatic cell technology aimed at higher energy density and faster charging. Batteries built on that tech are expected to show up in GM's future EV lineup over time.

At the same time, Samsung SDI bought out GM's full 49.99% stake in SynergyCells, the joint venture the two companies formed in 2024, taking sole control of the business. The venture is building a battery plant in New Carlisle, Indiana, backed by $3.5 billion in total investment, with annual output eventually expected to hit 27GWh once complete.

With full ownership secured, Samsung SDI now has its first solo-run battery plant in North America. The company said the site will produce more than just prismatic EV cells — it also plans to build out a dedicated line for energy storage system (ESS) batteries, aiming to tap into the fast-growing US ESS market.

Samsung SDI has spent the past year locking down large ESS battery supply deals with US energy firms, steadily expanding its American footprint. Landing sole control of the Indiana plant makes clear the company is leaning harder on ESS as a growth engine while EV battery demand cools.

According to figures from the Korean Film Council's (KOFIC) integrated box-office network — the government-run system that tracks real-time ticket sales at every theater nationwide — 'Odyssey' blew past the 2-million mark over the weekend. That's six days faster than it took Nolan's previous film, the true-story atomic-bomb drama that eventually drew 3.23 million admissions, to hit the same number, a sign the director's pull with Korean audiences hasn't faded.

The most striking part of the run has been its head-to-head with a new Marvel release that opened around the same time. Early on, the two films were separated by as few as 20,000 admissions, but 'Odyssey' pulled ahead decisively over the weekend. It did so while running on fewer screens than its rival, which made its lead in seat occupancy rate — the share of available seats actually sold — all the more notable to industry watchers.

Korean theaters have been flooded with major foreign releases this year, and 'Odyssey' is already the fourth film to cross 2 million admissions, joining a pack led by the new Marvel movie, with an animated sequel and a space sci-fi title also in the mix. That makes this milestone especially significant — it was earned in one of the most crowded blockbuster seasons Korean theaters have seen in years.

The film follows a hero who, having led the Greeks to victory in the Trojan War, tries to make his way home while facing the wrath of the gods — a big-screen take on the ancient epic. Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland lead the cast, and word of mouth has centered on the film's massive scale and visual craft.

Roughly 1,000 scientists and engineers from the US and Korea gathered in Orlando, Florida, for a four-day conference on joint research and commercialization across artificial intelligence, aerospace, semiconductors and biohealth. Now in its 39th year since launching in 1994, this year's event ran under the theme 'From Imagination to Innovation to Reality.' At the opening ceremony, organizers said collaboration that crosses both national borders and academic disciplines would shape breakthroughs that change humanity's future.

Among the keynote speakers, the one who drew the most attention was the Nvidia co-founder who helped commercialize the graphics processing unit, or GPU. He credited the memory chip technology built up by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix as the backbone of today's AI supercomputing infrastructure, saying that without their contributions, neither Nvidia nor the broader AI boom would have been possible. He predicted AI infrastructure will soon become as fundamental to a country as its power grid or water supply, and voiced support for the Korean government's decision to make AI a national priority.

He pushed back on growing worries about an AI investment bubble. What's unfolding now, he argued, is just the early stage of a generational industrial shift, and the biggest changes are still to come. Pointing to how nations that built out power grids or telecom networks first ended up leading their eras, he warned that countries slow to build AI infrastructure risk falling behind — and that securing independent AI capacity quickly is essential for any nation that wants to shape its own future.

The next phase he described is one where AI spreads well beyond research labs. He predicted that over the next decade, the most consequential breakthroughs won't come from major AI labs but from people applying AI within life sciences, medicine, climate science, materials engineering and manufacturing — innovation emerging where deep domain expertise meets new tools, blurring the lines between fields. He added that investment made only once demand is obvious is already too late, and that the chip and AI companies currently leading will likely hold their edge for some time.

Also at the conference, Park In-kyu, head of the Ministry of Science and ICT's Office of Science and Technology Innovation, attended sessions on AI, space, and quantum technology applications. A day earlier he toured Kennedy Space Center, reviewing facilities and cooperation tied to the international lunar exploration project Korea is participating in, and pledged support for exchange programs to bring the experience of Korean-American scientists back into research efforts at home.

The White House just built a new trade wall around polysilicon, the foundational material behind both semiconductors and solar panels. The signed measure rests on two pillars: a 15% tariff on polysilicon derivatives, and a minimum import price on the raw material itself. A White House official framed the move at the signing as part of a broader trade and tariff push rooted in Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, meant to protect domestic polysilicon manufacturing and block cheap, potentially dumped supply from abroad.

The minimum import price is set at $21 per kilogram for raw polysilicon and $100 per kilogram for ingots and wafers — the cylindrical blocks and sliced discs made from it. In practice, that's designed to keep low-cost producers, China chief among them, from undercutting the US market below that floor. On top of that, derivative products get hit with an additional 15% ad valorem tariff. The new rules take effect just after midnight Eastern time on December 4, 120 days from the signing date.

This didn't come out of nowhere. The Commerce Department opened a Section 232 investigation last July into whether polysilicon imports pose a national security risk, and this decision is the result. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said at the signing that polysilicon is an essential raw material for the silicon wafers that go into AI chips and smartphone chips, and that the goal is to boost domestic production.

The White House didn't stop at defense. It also directed the Commerce Secretary to draft a separate incentive program for companies building polysilicon manufacturing plants on US soil — pairing the tariff-and-price-floor shield with subsidy-style carrots to grow domestic production capacity from the other direction.

As warnings mount that AI chip bottlenecks are shifting from processors to memory, Korea's two big memory makers shared the stage at the world's largest memory and storage industry event, held in California. Both companies agreed that explosive growth in tokens processed during AI inference has outpaced what conventional memory architectures can handle. The presentations took place the day before, local time.

Samsung's answer is to stack memory vertically instead of spreading it out horizontally. zHBM takes high-bandwidth memory — traditionally placed beside the accelerator — and stacks it directly on top of the chip, shrinking the distance signals need to travel. By combining full-wafer bonding with direct copper-to-copper connections, Samsung packed in far denser wiring, cutting thermal resistance to 10-25% of what's expected from the still-in-development HBM5. The Samsung executive who presented said the company plans to co-design zHBM with processor makers from the start, rather than selling it as an off-the-shelf product.

Samsung's 3D push extended to storage too. The company unveiled the industry's first 10th-generation V-NAND, stacked past 400 layers, alongside zNAND-O, an on-device AI solution that bundles multiple NAND layers together. The design hands fast, temporary data to DRAM while storing the bulky AI models themselves on NAND-based memory; mass-production samples are slated to ship starting in 2028.

SK hynix took a different route. Together with SanDisk, it finalized and unveiled the HBF standard, which stacks NAND in 8 or 16 layers to deliver up to 512GB of capacity and transfer speeds of up to 3TB per second. Built around the industry-wide UCIe interconnect standard, HBF is designed to plug into a range of different processors, with Google and Tenstorrent both taking part in the standardization effort. Where Samsung is betting on doing everything in-house, SK hynix is betting on a wider, shared ecosystem.

Market conditions form the backdrop for both announcements. Samsung held onto the No. 1 spot in global memory revenue in the first quarter of this year, and market researchers expect the overall memory market to expand sharply next year. One French research firm predicted Korea will keep its lead in memory for years to come, citing both companies' rising investment and government support — while also flagging a new wrinkle: as AI shifts from training to inference, product development cycles are speeding up.