The Korea Times

What China’s HBM catch-up should teach Korea

Two headlines in June should shape Korea’s artificial intelligence (AI) debate. The first was a victory lap. SK hynix overtook Samsung Electronics by common-share market capitalization for a day, powered by high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in AI systems. Samsung has a fair caveat: If preferred shares are included, it remains larger. But the market signal was clear. AI has turned memory from a cyclical commodity into critical infrastructure. The second headline was less comfortable. Korean and industry reports suggest China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is moving faster in HBM than many in Seoul expected. Korea still leads. But the margin is narrowing, and that should change how Seoul thinks about its AI goals. Start with what the CXMT story actually shows. HBM3 is no longer the frontier. Nvidia’s Rubin platform uses HBM4, and Korean firms are already pushing into HBM4 and HBM4E. SK hynix has shipped samples of 12-layer HBM4E chips to major customers, while Samsung has showcased HBM4 and HBM4E products for Nvidia’s next-generation platforms. CXMT is trying to close

2d agoBy Daniel Castro and Kim Se-jin

What China’s HBM catch-up should teach Korea

Guest Columns

Digital frontline of East Asia security regime

Northeast Asia is entering a period of profound strategic transformation. The region is no longer defined solely by military balances, territorial disputes or nuclear deterrence. Instead, it is increasingly shaped by the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), cyber capabilities, hybrid warfare, technological competition, energy security and shifting major-power alignments. The result is an emerging security architecture that is more complex, interconnected and unpredictable than at any point since the end of the Cold War. Recent diplomatic developments illustrate the speed of this transformation. U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed engagement with China's President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategic coordination with Beijing, and Xi’s outreach to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un underscore how major-power politics continues to shape Northeast Asia. Yet the region’s future is not being determined only through summits and military posturing. Increasingly, the decisive battleground lies in cyberspace, technological innovation, AI governance, semicondu

2d agoBy Jagannath Panda

Digital frontline of East Asia security regime

Guest Columns

Xi-Kim summit rebalancing chessboard?

The lavish welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping received on his recent visit to North Korea stylistically underscored a deep and comradely relationship between the two communist regimes. Xi’s trip to Pyongyang, his first visit in seven years to the secluded socialist state, was nonetheless more about reviving and rebalancing ties with the dictator Kim Jong-un than about political substance. Xi as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, lavished praise on North Korea, a neighboring state sharing many of China’s cultural traditions. State media reported that both are “socialist countries led by communist parties with traditional friendship, rooted in their shared ideals and beliefs as well as their common goals, and backed by a profound historical foundation, a solid political basis, and strong emotional bonds.” During the 1950-53 Korean War for example, newly founded People’s Republic of China sent hundreds of thousands of “volunteers” to aid North Korea’s attack on South Korea. The Chinese communist forces sustained huge losses in helping their North Korean co

2d agoBy John J. Metzler

Guest Columns

7 lessons to escape a world in disorder

Our international environment today is as chaotic, disorderly and bleak as any of us can remember. The last decade or more has been a far cry from the cooperation and optimism that generally prevailed in the first two decades after the end of the Cold War. The litany of what has gone wrong is long. We have seen an erosion of respect, especially by the biggest powers, for international law, multilateral institutions and processes. We have witnessed the waging of aggressive war in Ukraine and Iran, the militarization of the South China Sea, paralysis in the U.N. Security Council and a collapse of development assistance funding. The United States has withdrawn from multiple international agencies, and retreated from the World Trade Organization while adopting trade coercion. There has been a failure of response to mass atrocity crimes, assaults on the International Criminal Court and weakness in collective responses to the great existential threats of climate change, pandemics and nuclear war. Nuclear arms control agreements are either dead, dying or on life support, and no solutions hav

Jul 1, 2026By Gareth Evans

Guest Columns

The evolving Europe-Korea strategic partnership: A view from Brussels and Berlin

I have recently been conducting research and holding meetings with senior officials in Brussels and Berlin. I arrived shortly after the summit between Lee Jae Myung and European Union leaders, which began a swing through Europe for the Korean president. Lee had a packed agenda: an EU-Korea summit, bilateral summits with the Belgian and Italian prime ministers, an audience with Pope Leo XIV and attendance at the G7 leaders’ meeting in France. As former EU ambassador to Korea Michael Reiterer put it, “a Korean president spending 10 consecutive days in Europe sticks out.” Indeed, after 18 months of relative torpor in Europe-Korea relations, Lee’s visit marked a step forward. Above all, it was a moment for strategic partners to take stock of a mature relationship that had suffered deprioritization due to recent distractions — notably Europe’s focus on Russia and Seoul’s reestablishing of political normalcy following former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law folly. My time in Brussels and Berlin thus came at the right moment, and provided a timely opportunity to hold disc

Jun 30, 2026

The evolving Europe-Korea strategic partnership: A view from Brussels and Berlin

Guest Columns

The promise and peril of AGI

NEW DELHI — The prospect of artificial general intelligence (AGI) — systems capable of performing any human cognitive task — has inspired both hope and anxiety. While AGI could usher in an unprecedented increase in global living standards, it could also sharply reduce demand for human labor, fueling unemployment, social unrest, and conflict. Much of the AI debate in recent years has swung between these two extremes. Strikingly, one of the most insightful analyses of the promise and peril of AGI came from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In a blog post originally published in 2023 and updated in 2025, Altman displayed a measure of philosophical skepticism uncommon among tech optimists. “We want AGI to empower humanity to maximally flourish in the universe,” he wrote, while recognizing that doing so would require “successfully navigating massive risks.” To be sure, some skepticism is warranted when assessing the potential benefits of technological advances. Since the Enlightenment, humanity has increasingly rejected superstition and dogma in favor of the skeptical spirit of scientifi

Jun 30, 2026By Kaushik Basu

Guest Columns

New risks lurk for Korea-US shipbuilding partnership

On June 5, U.S.Rep. Jared Golden's amendment passed the House Armed Services Committee as part of the FY 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), now heading to a House vote. Intended to promote the U.S. domestic shipbuilding industry, the amendment prohibits any FY 2027 NDAA funds from being used to obtain battle force ships and parts built in foreign shipyards. Historically, the U.S. Navy has never purchased a battle force ship from a foreign country. This practice is also codified in existing law: Under 10 U.S.C. 8679, the military is generally prohibited from procuring major components of the hull or superstructure of any such vessel from foreign shipyards. The Golden amendment would close off any remaining flexibility, prohibiting foreign procurement of battle force ships and parts entirely. The problem is that the ban the amendment proposes directly goes against where U.S. defense strategy has been heading. Facing workforce shortages, the U.S. ability to sustain sea operations through battle force and commercial ships is a known vulnerability across the Pacific. According

Jun 30, 2026By Daniel Choi

New risks lurk for Korea-US shipbuilding partnership

Guest Columns

Was Brexit inevitable?

FIESOLE, ITALY — In a short essay published almost 40 years ago, the French author Emmanuel Carrère observed that counterfactual history—imaginative accounts of what might have been—is driven by an abiding sense of intolerance for inevitability. For many in the nineteenth century, for example, it was simply intolerable that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and exiled to Saint Helena. One must rebel against the idea that it could not have been otherwise, Carrère claimed. Carrère’s argument is newly relevant now that we are marking the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, when a slim majority of voters in the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. To understand how that outcome came about, we need to look back at least another decade, to the heyday of European integration. Starting in 2004, ten countries, including eight former Communist states, joined the EU in what was the largest expansion in the bloc’s history. The euro had entered circulation two years earlier, and the Schengen system (visa-free travel) had opened borders that previously separated p

Jun 28, 2026By Fabrizio Tassinari

Guest Columns

How to conserve tropical forests

STANFORD — Six months after last year’s United Nations Climate Conference (COP30), the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) has gone from being a headline-grabbing promise to a test of whether climate finance can survive contact with markets, politics, and time. The TFFF’s purpose—conserving tropical forests—is of paramount importance. Tropical deforestation and land-use changes have contributed to nearly one-fifth of the world’s cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since 1850. Tropical forests are also among the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems and home to many Indigenous Peoples and local communities. But tropical countries face opportunity costs when conserving forests, so it falls on northern countries to compensate them for conservation efforts that benefit everyone. Such was the reasoning behind the Brazilian COP presidency’s TFFF proposal. Within the TFFF is a Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF) that seeks to raise $125 billion, part of which will be invested in emerging and developing economies. The hope is that, with sponsor capital, guarantees, and a hig

Jun 25, 2026By Bård Harstad

Guest Columns

After K-food’s global success, a question about health

For many Koreans, the global success of Korean food is more than a business story. It is emotional. It carries memories of home, family, school snacks, street markets, late-night meals and, in many cases, a quiet sense of pride that Korean culture has finally become familiar to people far beyond the peninsula. I still remember how Korean food was first introduced to many international viewers through "Dae Jang Geum," also known as "Jewel in the Palace." In that drama, food was not presented simply. It demonstrated care, discipline, seasonality and devotion. The kitchen was not just a place for cooking. It was a space where knowledge, patience and affection were expressed through ingredients. Since then, the global image of Korean food has changed dramatically. In the 2010s, mukbang videos brought Korean eating culture into the digital world. Later, Korean fried chicken, instant noodles, tteokbokki, bibimbap and kimchi have become familiar to people across the world. Today, it is no longer surprising to see international consumers themselves trying extra-spicy Korean instant noodles or

Jun 25, 2026By Shin Go-eun

Guest Columns

What China’s HBM catch-up should teach Korea

Digital frontline of East Asia security regime

Xi-Kim summit rebalancing chessboard?

7 lessons to escape a world in disorder

The evolving Europe-Korea strategic partnership: A view from Brussels and Berlin

The promise and peril of AGI

New risks lurk for Korea-US shipbuilding partnership

Was Brexit inevitable?

How to conserve tropical forests

After K-food’s global success, a question about health

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