Latest posts
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Korea Banned Storing ID Numbers After a Breach, and Locked Foreigners Out by Accident
Korean identity verification rejects foreigners who have every document in order. The reason traces back to a 2011 breach of 35 million records and the phone-carrier system that replaced what it destroyed.
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Why Files From Korea Arrive as Gibberish, and the Two Fixes That Actually Work
Korean text turning into symbols is really two separate problems with opposite fixes. Here is how to tell CP949 from UTF-8 fast, reproduced on a Korean-locale Windows machine.
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Why Korea Is Building Nuclear Reactors Again
Korea just approved its first new nuclear reactor site in 14 years. The reason traces straight back to how much power AI data centers need.
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Index Funds vs ETFs: The Same Index, a Different Tax Bill
Index funds and ETFs tracking the same index can hold identical stocks and still produce very different tax bills. The reason is structural, not performance.
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South Korea’s Record $597 Billion Budget Runs on the Chips It Just Sold
Korea’s 2027 budget, 821 trillion won and a record 12.8% jump, is funded substantially by the same HBM chip profits it is now investing further into AI and semiconductor infrastructure.
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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…