South Korea

The Kospi has become the world's best-performing major equity benchmark this year, surging more than 90% as investors piled into artificial-intelligence winners

South Korea's ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol and his former defense minister were sentenced to 30 years in prison Friday in a case alleging Yoon ordered drone flights over Pyongyang in 2024 to heighten tensions with North Korea and justify declaring martial law at home. The full version of the Seoul Central District Court's ruling was not immediately available. The same court earlier sentenced Yoon to life in prison for a rebellion conviction over his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024. North Korea accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang to drop propaganda leaflets three times in October 2024. South Korea's defense minister at the time, Kim Yong Hyun, issued a vague denial before the Defense Ministry said it could neither confirm nor deny the allegations. Tensions rose sharply but did not lead to any military clashes. Yoon's lawyers criticised the latest ruling, saying the drone flights were a response to North Korea flying thousands of trash-carrying ...

South Korea's Kospi erased Monday's 8.3 per cent drop, continuing the wild swings that have pushed its 10-day rolling volatility to an annualised 81 per cent

South Korea has overtaken India to become the world’s sixth-largest stock market. Its market capitalisation has surged 86% this year to $5 trillion

Hedge fund Golden Horse Fund Management has trimmed exposure and added derivative protection, while M&G Investments has cut memory and foundry holdings to broaden out down the AI supply chain

Foreign selling paints different pictures in India and South Korea, mutual funds warm to Adani stocks, and investor conferences create an unexpected travel bottleneck

Seoul broadens talent visa access and allows firms to hire more skilled foreign workers

South Korea's AI-driven stock market boom highlights how semiconductor strength is shaping global capital flows, raising questions about whether India's chip ecosystem can support its AI ambitions

India's Fairwood Nuclear Pvt Ltd and South Korea's SK Securities Co Ltd have signed a strategic collaboration agreement to support the development and financing of small modular reactors (SMRs) and micro modular reactors (MMRs) in India, the companies said on Wednesday. The agreement aims to accelerate the commercial and technical development of advanced nuclear projects in India, as interest grows in low-carbon and energy-secure power generation technologies. Under the pact, the companies will work together on project development, industry engagement, investor outreach and fundraising initiatives. The partnership is expected to leverage SK Securities' network across the nuclear, infrastructure and financial sectors in South Korea and international markets to support future projects in India. "The agreement creates a strategic relationship focused on accelerating project development, strengthening international industry engagement and facilitating access to capital markets and nucle

Investor enthusiasm for AI-linked semiconductor companies has lifted Taiwan and South Korea above India in global market-cap rankings, highlighting India's limited exposure to the sector

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, newly minted members of the $1 trillion valuation club, have powered Korea's equity surge, lifting the Kospi's 2026 gains to more than 100% through AI memory chips

Powered by chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung, South Korea's Kospi has doubled in 2026, reviving comparisons with the dotcom-era rally

SK Hynix rose as much as 11 per cent in South Korea on Wednesday, taking its 12-month gain to more than 1,000 per cent and becoming the third Asian company to join the $1 trillion club

North Korea launched an unidentified projectile off its west coast Tuesday, South Korea's military said. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff gave no further details. It followed another launch by the North on April 19, in which it fired multiple short-range missiles in what state-media described as a demonstration of cluster bomb warheads. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has focused on expanding his nuclear and missile arsenals since nuclear diplomacy with US President Donald Trump collapsed in 2019. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to return to talks with Kim, and but Pyongyang has so far ignored the overtures and urged Washington to drop demands for the North's nuclear disarmament as a precondition for talks.

The two countries signed agreements on cyber defence, military training and UN peacekeeping cooperation during Rajnath Singh's visit to Seoul

The ships are among a handful of supertankers exiting the Gulf this month via a transit route that Iran has ordered ships to use

Management and union leaders at Samsung Electronics failed to reach a last-minute deal over wages Wednesday, raising prospects for a strike at the South Korean electronics giant that could rattle global semiconductor supplies and the country's trade-dependent economy. Government officials have threatened to invoke rarely used emergency powers to force a settlement at Samsung, where the union, which represents about 74,000 workers, says the company has failed to offer adequate compensation despite its soaring profits fuelled by the global boom in artificial intelligence. After the latest round of talks ended without a breakthrough on Wednesday, union leader Choi Seung-ho told reporters that unionized workers will begin an 18-day strike from Thursday. Both the union and the management held each other responsible for a failure to reach a deal. Choi accused management of refusing to accept a government-mediated proposal whose details he refused to disclose. Management accused the union

Defence Minister said his discussions during the visit would focus on expanding defence ties and enhancing regional cooperation

His head, chest and hands strapped with body cameras, David Park deftly folded a banquet napkin the way he has thousands of times during his nine years at the five-star Lotte Hotel Seoul. Each of his motions is fed into a database that will one day teach a robot to do the same. The hotel chain is one of many companies South Korean artificial-intelligence startup RLWRLD (pronounced "real world") is working with to create an extensive library of human expertise, harvested from skilled workers across industries, to develop AI brains for robots that could be coming to industrial sites and homes. It collects similar data from logistics workers at CJ, capturing how they grip, lift and handle goods in warehouses, and from staff at a Japanese convenience store chain Lawson, tracking how they organise food displays. The goal is to build an AI software layer that can work in robots across a range of factories and other work sites in coming years, before potentially expanding into homes. ...

The total market capitalization of Korean-listed companies has surged more than 45 per cent this year to $4.04 trillion, while the UK's has climbed about 3 per cent to $3.99 trillion