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Iran's newly formed strait watchdog, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), posted the names of 45 tankers on X on August 23, warning that vessels on the list could face fines, detention, or cargo seizure for violating transit rules. The roster includes ships owned by Sinokor Merchant Marine, a South Korean shipping company. Local reports put the Sinokor-owned count at five vessels. Sinokor ranks as Korea's third-largest shipping company by revenue.

The blacklist spans a mix of vessel types, from ultra-large crude carriers to LNG and LPG tankers to refined-product carriers. Alongside Sinokor, ships tied to Norwegian ship manager Klaveness, Saudi Arabia's state-run carrier Bahri, the logistics and shipping arm of Abu Dhabi's state oil company ADNOC and its subsidiary Navig8, and vessels from Stolt Tankers all made the list.

The PGSA said it could add more vessels to the sanctions list, including ships involved in ship-to-ship transfers with already-blacklisted tankers, though it didn't spell out exactly which rule each vessel broke. Given that Iranian authorities have long required advance transit permits and toll-like fees from ships passing through the strait, the move is widely seen as connected to that requirement. Vessels named on the list reportedly can still be removed if operators submit supporting documentation.

The crackdown lands as the US signals even harsher sanctions on Iran, reigniting tensions around the Hormuz Strait. President Trump has repeatedly claimed the waterway effectively falls under US jurisdiction. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said roughly 8 million barrels of crude oil pass safely through the strait each day thanks to US Navy escorts.

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.