Seoul - South Korea will double spending on artificial intelligence and semiconductors in 2027 to a record high, the president said Monday, pledging to use the technology to turn the military into a "smart, elite force." President Lee Jae Myung in his annual budget speech to parliament said 21.3 trillion won ($16 billion) would be allocated to chipmaking and artificial intelligence, spanning data centers to robotics. "We will make bold investments in AI and future growth engines to boost our economy's growth potential," he said, adding that the figure was "nearly double this year's amount." In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

At the world's biggest chipmaking complex, Samsung is building the fabs it needs for the AI memory boom. Samsung's new fabs are clad in Mondrian-style panels of red, yellow, and blue. It's just before noon on a Monday, and construction workers are pouring out of Samsung's fabs in Pyeongtaek, a farming city south of Seoul where rice paddies abut a sprawling chipmaking complex. Thousands of workers, dressed head to toe in black with sky-blue vests, take off helmets bearing their names and fab numbers. They walk to lunch, sweaty and flushed, in chunky sneakers capped with yellow rubber toe guards. Some hop on scooters or motorcycles to get around the campus, which covers an area about the size of New York City's Central Park.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and other officials observe the Hyunmoo-5 missile at an undisclosed test site in South Korea on Thursday. Seoul - South Korea test-fired its first homegrown hypersonic weapon on Thursday, the presidential office said, days after Pyongyang announced the AI-assisted launch of an intermediate-range hypersonic missile. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung "observed the first test launch of a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) -- currently under research and development using domestic technology," the presidential Blue House said in a statement. Hypersonic glide vehicles are sent into the upper atmosphere via rocket boosters or on ballistic missiles, then glide towards their target at five times the speed of sound or greater. Hailing a "key strategic asset capable of changing the course of the battlefield," the South Korean statement said that the missiles' "unpredictable flight trajectories and overwhelming speed enable them to strike key strategic targets." The test was aimed at verifying "the performance of ultra-high-temperature heat-resistant materials -- a core technology for glide vehicles -- as well as guidance and control capabilities and the ability to fly irregularly at low altitudes under hypersonic flight conditions," it added.

South Korea bank hack suspect may be 26-year-old in China, U.S. firm says Authorities in Seoul are investigating cyberattacks that affected multiple financial institutions after banks, including Shinhan Bank and KB Kookmin Bank, reported data breaches. SEOUL - The suspect behind recent cyberattacks targeting South Korea's financial sector may be a 26-year-old based in China's Guangdong province, U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has said. In a report published on its website on Wednesday, CrowdStrike said it uncovered personal details linked to the suspected attacker while analyzing AI coding-tool sessions and infrastructure associated with a campaign targeting South Korean financial institutions from late September to early October. CrowdStrike said the attacker used ARTEX, a recently released Chinese-developed open-source penetration testing tool, alongside large language models and assessed with "moderate confidence" that the actor was a Chinese speaker and likely financially motivated. The firm said one Claude Code session contained a request to create a security researcher resume describing results from the hacking activity.

South Korea's Lee says AI appears to have been used in bank hacks SEOUL - South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said on Tuesday that AI models are believed to have been used in some recent hacking incidents against banks and called for the country to develop cybersecurity methods suited to the AI era. "In some hacking incidents, signs have emerged of AI being used, causing considerable public concern and anxiety," Lee said during a cabinet meeting. "Please establish the circumstances swiftly and clearly, and concentrate personnel and resources on minimizing the damage." South Korea's police have launched a full-scale investigation into the hacking attacks against commercial banks that led to a breach of customers' personal information, the Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday. Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and others had reported cyberattacks, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said on Friday, while Yonhap reported that Hana Bank and Woori Bank also suffered breaches.

Ten years after AlphaGo's match against Go champion Lee Sedol, today's AI still isn't tapping into the machinery that made that win possible. On an afternoon in Seoul in March 2016, I watched a program I helped build put a stone on the fifth line of a Go board in what looked like a gift to its human opponent. Move 37 in game two of the five-game match looked so absurd that some commentators thought it was a programming glitch. AlphaGo won the game, ultimately triumphing 4-1 over Lee Sedol, one of the greatest professional Go players of all time. "I thought AlphaGo was based on probability calculation and that it was merely a machine," Lee said afterwards . "But when I saw this move, I changed my mind.

South Korea's power demand set to soar on AI boom South Korean Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment Kim Sung-whan checks data of the Han River Flood Control Office's flood forecasting system in Seoul on Sept. 2. | REUTERS SEOUL - South Korea's demand for power in the coming years is set to surge on plans by chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to expand production and the building of new artificial intelligence data centers, according to the country's energy minister. Those AI-driven power needs alone will lift South Korea's demand for power by 25 to 30 gigawatts, the Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment Kim Sung-whan said in an interview this month. On top of that, the country will also need to contend with increased power demand due to the shift to electric vehicles from gasoline-engine cars and to heating via electricity rather than gas, he added. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Could robots be the future of theme parks? To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Could robots be the future of theme parks? This is Galway Robot Park, a 16,500-square-meter venue that's opened near Seoul in South Korea . The company behind the park says their aim is to bring artificial intelligence and robotics into the world of entertainment.

China sees opportunity in America's recent AI security scares Software made by OpenAI broke free and hacked into another company's computer systems in July. SEOUL - In the United States, recent episodes of powerful artificial intelligence software breaking free and hacking into other computer systems prompted a wave of anxiety and intense debate about how to guard against the risks of AI. But in China, these incidents and the growing capabilities of AI have not caused the same level of alarm. The government already controls many kinds of technology, including AI. The prevailing attitude in the industry has been that the benefits of AI far outweigh the risks. That was exemplified Friday when Z.ai, a Beijing-based AI startup, made public the details of its latest model.

The forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) took place in Seoul, South Korea from 6-11 July. We take a look at what the participants got up to during the event. The PC Chairs are presenting the welcome remarks. One of the best conference dinners I've ever had. Try TimeChat-Captioner (at #ICML2026) -- a videoLLM that generates dense, time-aware captions for long videos.