KH Explains In series
Major issues broken down to the basics.
#Explained
# Issues
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KH Explains In series
Major issues broken down to the basics.
Would you like to subscribe?
What to know about Korea's near-24-hour won market
South Korea's dollar-won spot market will move to near-24-hour trading from Monday, in Seoul's latest effort to bring more won trading onshore and open up one of Asia's most tightly managed currency markets. The shift is expected to improve foreign investors' access to won trading and reduce reliance on offshore pricing. But it will also test whether Korea's onshore market has enough overnight liquidity to absorb global shocks smoothly. Here is what to know about the key changes, expected benefi
July 5, 2026 - 15:11:51
Who rules Kospi? Samsung, SK hynix locked in battle for No. 1
Samsung Electronics' 26-year reign as the benchmark Kospi's most valuable company came to an end on June 22, when its crosstown rival SK hynix briefly overtook the tech giant in market capitalization. While Samsung Electronics' lead remains solid when preferred shares, worth roughly 165 trillion won ($106 billion), are included in its valuation, SK hynix's surge on a common-share basis has nevertheless challenged its long-standing dominance at the top of Korea's equity market. The shift was driv
July 1, 2026 - 14:53:46
Korea's W800tr chip bet depends on moving talent south
When the head of SK hynix spoke in Seoul on Monday about Korea's largest-ever semiconductor commitment, his first request to the government was not for money, land or power; it was for good schools. Without them, the chief executive Kwak Noh-jung warned, sending young engineers south could create "weekend couples," the Korean shorthand for families split by a distant job posting. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have committed a combined 800 trillion won ($517 billion) to build four memory fabs
June 30, 2026 - 15:03:25
Quiet, but decisive: Koo Kwang-mo's remaking of LG
When Koo Kwang-mo took the helm of LG Group in 2018 at age 40, he did so without a grand ceremony, a high-profile speech or the usual fanfare surrounding chaebol succession. Eight years later, that restrained style still defines one of South Korea’s youngest conglomerate chiefs. Behind the low-key image, however, Koo has driven some of LG's most consequential changes in decades — exiting smartphones, scaling back LCDs and redirecting the group toward higher-margin businesses such as vehicle comp
June 28, 2026 - 13:29:58
Why Samsung may welcome Apple's most expensive iPhone yet
Samsung Electronics may have an unlikely reason to welcome Apple's first foldable iPhone: The more Apple charges for it, the less shocking Samsung's own prices will look. Ahead of Samsung's expected unveiling of its Galaxy Z Fold 8 series in London in late July, its mobile business is walking into a hard launch. Memory and processor costs are climbing, leaks point to higher Galaxy prices, and Apple, absent from the category for years, is expected to enter in September with what could be the most
June 25, 2026 - 12:48:07
How a Swedish drinking song turned into K-pop
When Rose and Bruno Mars' "Apt." became a global hit last year, millions of listeners around the world found themselves singing along to a phrase they did not fully understand. To many Koreans, however, the song's central hook required no explanation. It was a chant used in a popular Korean drinking game played at university orientations, company dinners and late-night gatherings with friends. The song’s success sparked an unexpected question in Sweden. If a Korean drinking-game chant could beco
June 23, 2026 - 18:13:23
Canada's $43b submarine choice: Korean readiness or German innovation?
South Korea’s naval ambitions are facing their most significant overseas test yet as Hanwha Ocean vies for a deal that could be worth up to 60 billion Canadian dollars ($42.88 billion). The Canadian Patrol Submarine Project, or CPSP, aims to acquire up to 12 diesel-electric submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy, operating across the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean-led consortium is up against Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems as finalists, with industry offic
June 17, 2026 - 15:30:12
Why Korea's chip boom is stirring hopes far from Seoul
Across Korea’s southwest, politicians have spent the last week hinting that the country’s two chip giants may be preparing investments there. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix say they know nothing about it. The promise was put most plainly on June 6, when Min Hyung-bae, the incoming leader of the new unified Gwangju region, told a forum that the prime minister had leaned in and told him, quietly, that "something is coming." That something, he indicated, was a share of the semiconductor boom that
June 16, 2026 - 15:03:38
Korea misses out on SpaceX's blockbuster IPO
As SpaceX blasted into the public market in a record-setting debut Friday, South Korea missed the ride altogether after Mirae Asset Securities, the only domestic member of the underwriting syndicate, failed to secure any share allocation. The rocket-maker enjoyed a successful Nasdaq launch, closing at $161 per share on Friday, up 19 percent from its initial public offering price of $135. The gain pushed its market cap above $2.1 trillion by the close of trading. Korea, however, was largely left
June 14, 2026 - 15:11:22
Korea's hidden AI race is made of glass
LG Innotek CEO Moon Hyuk-soo recently offered a neat summary of Korea’s next AI hardware bet. Glass substrates, he said, have largely finished development. But “a few homework problems” remain before anyone can mass-produce them. Solutions to those problems are now worth billions of dollars. Korea’s most surprising AI trade this year was not a chip. It was the firms that make the surrounding parts. Shares of Samsung Electro-Mechanics and LG Innotek have multiplied in 2026, as shortages in high-e
June 14, 2026 - 10:59:27
Why Jensen Huang wanted Korea to call him ‘K-Jensen’
"When I left this morning, I was just Jensen. Now I am K-Jensen. Next time I come back, call me K-Jensen." Jensen Huang delivered this line at Seoul National University on Monday, riffing on Korea's export machine. "If you have K-pop, you have K-beauty," he told the students. "Add a K, and it becomes instantly popular." It got the biggest reaction of his visit. But it was a strange thing for the head of the world's most valuable company to say. Nvidia's gaming cards made it a household name, but
June 11, 2026 - 15:53:57
Samsung foundry rebound gathers pace on AI chip wins
Samsung Electronics’ long-struggling foundry business is showing signs of a rebound, as improving yields, rising utilization and a string of high-profile AI chip projects raise prospects for a possible return to profit as early as the third quarter. The momentum is being driven by Samsung’s push to turn its combined strengths in logic, memory and packaging into an edge in custom artificial intelligence chips, with tight capacity at TSMC giving global tech customers more reason to diversify suppl
June 10, 2026 - 15:25:22
KT&G emerges as unlikely foreign favorite
So far, 2026 has been as good as it gets for South Korea's benchmark Kospi, with investors piling into chipmakers and artificial intelligence-driven data center plays. But outside the AI trade, few stocks have attracted as much attention as KT&G. Foreign ownership of the tobacco maker recently exceeded 50 percent for the first time in seven years as its shares climbed to a record 190,000 won ($123), up from a 52-week low of 119,200 won. With foreign ownership now on par with SK Hynix and surpass
June 7, 2026 - 16:49:37
Could SpaceX, OpenAI IPOs derail Korea's chip rally?
The blockbuster IPOs of SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic could trigger a bout of profit-taking in South Korea's soaring chip stocks, as investors rotate capital into some of Wall Street's most anticipated listings. Elon Musk's rocket and satellite maker SpaceX aims to list its shares as early as June 12, in what could become the biggest initial public offering of all time. Anthropic, developer of the Claude AI model, has also recently filed to go public, setting the stage for a closely watched IPO r
June 4, 2026 - 14:17:05
AI boom reshapes Korea's status ladder
South Korea's AI chip boom is creating a new class of corporate elite. Jobs at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, long prized for their salaries and stability, are increasingly being treated as status symbols in everything from college admissions and job searches to dating and marriage, as soaring AI-driven profits transform perceptions of the semiconductor industry. Online, the phenomenon has been dubbed "Samjeon-nix," a portmanteau of "Samjeon," Korean shorthand for Samsung Electronics and SK h
June 3, 2026 - 14:11:33
