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Jhoo Dong-chan

Korea Times AI content 2 team Reporter

Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light, though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they, do not go gentle into that good night.

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Companies

Smilegate, ‘GTA’ creator take stage at Tribeca to tease next big game

Korean video game publisher Smilegate stepped into the North American entertainment spotlight last week, anchoring a featured panel at the Tribeca Festival alongside Absurd Ventures, the new creative studio helmed by Grand Theft Auto co-creator Dan Houser. The joint appearance underscores a deepening alliance between the Seoul-based gaming heavyweight and the veteran storyteller, following Smilegate’s deal last year to secure global publishing rights for an unannounced high-budget, open-world action-adventure game based on Absurd’s original intellectual property, "A Better Paradise." The session, titled "Luminaries: Dan Houser's Absurd Ventures" and held during Tribeca’s Storytelling Summit, focused on how companies are navigating transmedia strategies — the practice of stretching a single narrative universe across video games, audio fiction, comic books and film. Lee Yi-jae, a Smilegate director overseeing global partnerships, joined Houser and his longtime creative collaborator Lazlow on stage. Lee detailed how the Korean firm evaluates intellectual property with cross-platfor

Jun 15, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Smilegate, ‘GTA’ creator take stage at Tribeca to tease next big game
Others

Global webtoon fans to choose best comics as World Webtoon Awards opens nominations

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, in partnership with the Korea Creative Content Agency, has opened public nominations for the "2026 World Webtoon Awards," an initiative aimed at celebrating the global dominance of the digital comic format. The submission window, open now until July 24, marks a significant shift in the event's third year. Moving away from traditional open submissions, the 2026 awards will rely entirely on global reader nominations to determine its preliminary pool. To participate, fans worldwide can recommend up to three titles on the official awards website, which supports English, Korean, Japanese, French and Spanish. Eligible works include any webtoon published on a domestic or international platform between January 1, 2025, and May 31, 2026. The evaluation process will follow a rigorous two-tier system. The top 100 reader-nominated titles will first undergo a preliminary screening by industry experts. A combined score of expert evaluation and reader votes will narrow the field to 20 finalists. The final 10 winners will then be chosen through a subsequent

Jun 15, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Global webtoon fans to choose best comics as World Webtoon Awards opens nominations
Entertainment

Actor-singer Lee Jun-young to begin military service, leaving behind packed roster of projects

Korean actor and singer Lee Jun-young will enlist in the military on July 21, temporarily sidelining a surging television career that has made him one of the country's most popular young stars. Lee, 29, shared the news Sunday in a handwritten letter posted to his social media accounts, writing that he wanted his fans to hear about the enlistment directly from him. Conscription is mandatory for nearly all able-bodied Korean men, who must serve roughly 18 to 21 months, depending on the branch of the armed forces. The announcement comes at a creative high point for Lee. He is currently starring in the hit JTBC weekend drama, "The New Employee, Chairman Kang," which began with a modest 3.7 percent viewership rating but has steadily broken its own audience records each week. In the series, Lee plays a young man navigating a body-swapping mishap, a performance that local critics have praised for its grounded nuance despite the outlandish premise. While military service typically stalls a rising actor's momentum — a phenomenon known locally as the "military hiatus" — Lee has meticulously st

Jun 15, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Actor-singer Lee Jun-young to begin military service, leaving behind packed roster of projects
Companies

Innocean, SBVA partner to support growth of AI, tech startups

Innocean, the marketing and advertising arm of Hyundai Motor Group, has partnered with venture capital firm SBVA to launch a corporate backing initiative for growth-stage tech startups, the companies said Monday. The program, dubbed “UP 2026,” marks a strategic shift for Innocean as it attempts to diversify beyond its traditional advertising roots into artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, data analytics and brand consulting for emerging tech players. The initiative pairs Innocean executives with more than 10 startups from SBVA’s portfolio. Participants include Blind, the popular anonymous professional social network; KREAM, a limited-edition sneaker and collectible resale marketplace; and Ohouse, a major home interior platform. Other companies involved span women's wellness app Queenit, on-demand service Laundrygo, and AI health care platform Gravitylabs. SBVA, which manages approximately 2.5 trillion won ($1.8 billion) in assets, rebranded in 2024 from its previous identity as SoftBank Ventures Asia. The firm has backed more than 100 global startups across AI, smart robotics an

Jun 15, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Innocean, SBVA partner to support growth of AI, tech startups
South Korea

Seoul to deploy AI technology to monitor expressways, crowded stadiums

The municipal agency responsible for overseeing the capital’s major public infrastructure will deploy a sweeping network of artificial intelligence (AI) safety systems this year, transitioning from manual surveillance to automated, real-time hazard detection. The initiative, announced Friday by the Seoul Facilities Corporation, will introduce specialized algorithmic monitoring across the city's critical transit corridors, sports arenas and public grounds to eliminate blind spots. At the Seoul World Cup Stadium, the agency will introduce an automated crowd management system utilizing LiDAR sensors, which emit laser pulses to map physical spaces in three dimensions. Operating alongside intelligent closed-circuit television cameras, the system will analyze crowd density in real time, classifying risk across four distinct alert tiers. If dangerous bottlenecks occur, the platform will automatically trigger evacuation warnings across the stadium's electronic scoreboards and public address systems. The city’s high-speed thoroughfares will see a similar digital overhaul. On five stretches of

Jun 12, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Seoul to deploy AI technology to monitor expressways, crowded stadiums
Law & Crime

Korean-Vietnamese crackdown shuts down webtoon piracy network

A massive overseas digital piracy network that illegally distributed Korean webtoons, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, has been dismantled through a joint investigation by Korean and Vietnamese authorities. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Friday that, in close cooperation with the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam, it successfully shut down three major illegal streaming websites and arrested two local operators. The targeted operations are estimated to have inflicted annual damages of roughly 207.2 billion won ($151 million) on the industry. The three shuttered platforms specifically targeted Korean intellectual property, with webtoons accounting for approximately 70 percent of their total hosted content. Operating since January 2023, the platforms unlawfully translated Korean webtoons into English and broadcasted them to a global audience spanning Asia, North America and Europe. By amassing a staggering 1.1 billion annual visitors, the operators generated substantial illicit revenue through embedded banner advertisements. The crackdown is being p

Jun 12, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Korean-Vietnamese crackdown shuts down webtoon piracy network
Law & Crime

Korea, US customs chiefs pledge closer ties to foil tariff evaders, halt drug flows

Senior customs officials from Korea and the United States met in Seoul Friday to forge a tighter united front against a multibillion-dollar surge in illicit trade and sophisticated narcotics smuggling, Korean authorities said. The high-level meeting at the Seoul Customs metropolitan office — marking the first visit by a senior American customs official to the agency’s leadership this year — brought together Korea Customs Service Commissioner Lee Jong-wook and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Regional Attache Director Sung Ha. The discussions focused primarily on combatting origin fraud, a rising corporate evasion scheme in which manufacturers in third countries falsely relabel their products as Korean-made to exploit preferential trade terms and circumvent punitive U.S. tariffs. The economic stakes of the enforcement gap are staggering, with Korean authorities uncovering trade security violations totaling 1.2 trillion won (about $864 million) between June 2025 and April 2026. Origin fraud alone accounted for 949.4 billion won of that figure — an astronomical 1,695 percen

Jun 12, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Korea, US customs chiefs pledge closer ties to foil tariff evaders, halt drug flows
South Korea

Seoul asks public to trade cars for bikes to cut carbon emissions, save fuel

Amid prolonged instability in the Middle East and growing volatility across global energy supply chains, municipal authorities in Seoul are turning to a ubiquitous fixture of city transit — the public bicycle — to curb oil dependence and reduce carbon emissions. The Seoul Energy Corporation, with the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Korea Energy Agency, announced Friday the launch of the "2026 Energy Donation Riding" campaign. The monthlong initiative challenges the public to swap their steering wheels for handlebars, transforming ordinary morning and evening commutes into acts of environmental and civic charity. Beginning Monday through July 10, residents can register for the campaign through the city's public bike-sharing app "Ttareungyi." To tie the initiative explicitly to the working week, tracking is strictly limited to weekday commuting windows: 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. for morning trips, and 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. for evening returns. Participants can log up to two qualifying trips per day. The initiative aims to lower the barrier to sustainable living by embedding it within a dail

Jun 12, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Seoul asks public to trade cars for bikes to cut carbon emissions, save fuel
Health

Gov't to supply clinical-grade stem cells to speed up biotech breakthroughs

Korea’s National Stem Cell Bank will begin distributing clinical-grade induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to researchers and biotech firms later this month, a move expected to significantly lower the financial and regulatory barriers gripping the country’s regenerative medicine sector. iPSCs are adult cells, like skin or blood cells, that have been genetically reprogrammed back into an embryonic-like state, allowing them to turn into any type of cell in the human body. The distribution program, scheduled to accept applications on June 30, follows the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) breakthrough assembly of the cells in March. By establishing a formalized regulatory contract system, the government can now provide raw materials directly to laboratories developing advanced biopharmaceuticals, including cell therapies and artificial blood. For the country’s nascent biotechnology sector, the logistical assistance is immense. Securing raw materials that meet strict Good Manufacturing Practice standards has long been a bottleneck for local research institutions and startups. Bu

Jun 12, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Gov't to supply clinical-grade stem cells to speed up biotech breakthroughs
Policy

5 nations sign AI alliance pact to shape global tech rules

Korea's chief standardization authority has entered into a multilateral pact with its counterparts in Singapore, the U.K., Australia and Canada, to carve out a greater role in shaping international artificial intelligence (AI) regulations amid an escalating U.S.-China tech rivalry. The memorandum of understanding, signed Thursday at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore, unites the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS) — an affiliate of Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources— with Enterprise Singapore, the British Standards Institution, Standards Australia and the Standards Council of Canada. The agreement focuses primarily on "pre-standardization," a critical phase of industry-driven groundwork that precedes formal global rules. This process defines core technical concepts, requirements, testing methodologies and conformity assessment guidelines before frameworks are officially codified by international regulators. Under the accord, the five nations plan to establish a regular circuit of joint workshops and expert seminars to share administrative best practices.

Jun 12, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
5 nations sign AI alliance pact to shape global tech rules
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