Latest posts
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Korean Battery Makers Hold 37% of the Market, and Also 12%
Photo by Roberto Sorin on Unsplash Here is a claim you will see about Korea’s battery industry, and a second claim, both from credible reporting, both true. “Korean makers hold about 37 percent of the market.” And: “Korean makers hold about 12 percent of the market.” Neither is wrong. They are measuring different markets, and…
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Apple Named It the iPhone Duo, and Korea Built Almost All of It
Apple’s first foldable iPhone launches September 9, but the supply chain behind it, Samsung Display’s panels, LG Innotek’s cameras, Samsung and SK Hynix’s memory, is a Korean story reported well before the keynote.
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Korea Turned Down a 360 Billion Won Settlement From Its Delivery Apps
Photo by Rowan Freeman on Unsplash In June 2026, Korea’s competition regulator was offered 360 billion won by two food delivery companies to make an investigation go away. It said no. That refusal is worth understanding outside Korea, because the practice at the centre of it is the same one regulators are fighting over in…
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Korea Runs One of the World’s Biggest Investment Funds, and It Has a Deadline
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash A country of about 51 million people runs one of the largest single pools of investment capital on earth. Korea’s National Pension Service reported 1,848.7 trillion won under management at the end of May 2026, which is roughly $1.3 trillion depending on the day’s exchange rate. Most people outside…
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What “Sovereign AI” Actually Means: Korea Is Finding Out by Elimination
Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash “Sovereign AI” has become one of those phrases that appears in ministerial speeches without ever being pinned down. Everyone agrees a country should have its own AI. Almost nobody specifies what would disqualify a model from counting. Korea is answering that question the hard way, by running a government…
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Korea Entry in 2026: K-ETA, the Exemption, and the Form Nobody Mentions
Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash Korea’s electronic entry paperwork confuses people for a specific reason: the requirement was suspended, not removed, and the thing it replaced came back in digital form. So “you don’t need K-ETA” is true and still leaves you with something to do. Straight answers below, checked against the Korean government’s…
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Korea Has 1,220 Robots per 10,000 Factory Workers: What That Number Means
Photo by Homa Appliances on Unsplash South Korea has 1,220 industrial robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers. The next country on the list has 818, and the one after that has 449. That is not a lead. It is a different category. And the interesting part is not that Korea automated hard, which everyone assumes,…
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South Korea Put AI Textbooks in Every School, Then Took Away Their Legal Status
Photo by Quilia on Unsplash South Korea did what nearly every education ministry is currently talking about doing. It put AI-driven textbooks into schools nationally, backed by law and serious money, and it did it first. Then, sixteen months after the policy was set in motion and five months after the software reached classrooms, the…
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Why Google Maps Still Cannot Navigate Korea (Even After the 2026 Approval)
Photo by noo jang on Unsplash Two things are true about Google Maps in South Korea right now, and most articles tell you only one of them. The first is that a nineteen-year standoff ended in February 2026. The Korean government approved Google’s request to export the detailed map data that navigation needs. The second…
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What Is KakaoTalk? How One Messaging App Ended Up Running Korea
KakaoTalk beat WhatsApp in Korea because of how text messages were billed in 2010. How it became payments, banking, taxis, and a character IP business.