South Korean government ministry overseeing trade policy, industrial strategy, and energy supply, including trade negotiations and energy security.
South Korean gasoline sales rose 2.97% in September, the first annual increase since March, even as the gasoline fleet was 0.7% smaller in August. Seoul's fuel price cap is the leading explanation, but calendar and discount effects in the same month keep the data from sizing its role.
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South Korea is preparing US patent and trade-secret aid for up to about 90 mid-sized and smaller firms in its $200 billion US investment program. Critics cited by The Seoul Economic Daily say it skips the risks of jointly owned patents, where US and Korean law diverge.
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Hyundai Department Store targets more than 10 overseas K-brand flagships by 2030 as Korea's big three chains build export programs. The three are putting very different amounts of fixed space abroad behind those programs, so each takes a different loss if the brands do not sell.
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Researchers trained a variational autoencoder on paired structural data and O K-edge EELS spectra to map local atomic descriptors in amorphous IGZO devices. Device groups get a way to read structure from broadened, overlapping spectra, though the abstract gives no error figure for the inferred descriptors.
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South Korea is putting 68.1 billion won into Doosan Robotics' AI chip and nuclear welding robot projects, about 69% of their 98.9 billion won cost. Until sales start in 2030, the government carries most of the cost of testing whether robots can halve nuclear welding time.
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South Korea exported a record $120.94 billion in September, up 83.5%, with chips supplying $60.3 billion. A $1 trillion year now needs only about $62 billion a month, so the open question is how much of the chip surge is price.
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KOSPI rose 1.95% to 6,971.35 on October 1 as Korea's September chip exports hit a record $60.3 billion, reversing a yield-driven early dip. The session shows chip news can beat US rate pressure for a day. How long it can keep doing so depends on how long the memory shortage lasts.
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South Korea named Changwon a national aircraft-engine hub backed by a 773.1 billion won plan to lift core-part localization from 22% to 90% by 2035. Orders for local parts makers still depend on a national engine program whose main phase is due to launch in 2028.
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Seoul estimates joining CPTPP would lift GDP 0.38 point after a decade while cutting farm, forestry and fisheries output 852.3 billion won a year. Manufacturers collect the gain and farmers carry 83% of the loss, on two figures measured in different ways.
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Korean refiners lost 5 trillion won under the government's oil price cap through June, above the 4.2 trillion won in contingency funds allocated for it. Whether the state budget or the refiners' own books carry the 800 billion won shortfall decides if the cap is a fiscal problem or an earnings one.
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Korea's arms procurement agency says Hanwha, now KAI's second-largest shareholder, faces a full merger review if it puts directors on the board. That puts the deal's regulatory cost on the step from shareholder to controller.
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Korea and ASEAN open a second round in Singapore to rewrite their 2007 goods-only FTA across 13 working groups. Companies sourcing through Southeast Asia should expect revised origin checks and minerals rules to arrive before any tariff cut.
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South Korea will remit a first $2.2 billion for its US projects, including a $22.3 billion Texas LNG plant, once Trump announces them. Last year's agreement makes his public word the trigger, so his crowded diplomatic calendar now sets the payment date.
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Reuters says renting part of Intel's unfinished Ohio plant is one of the leading options, alongside a joint venture with cloud buyers. Both companies call it undecided, and Washington threatens chip tariffs.
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The government told the National Assembly that the Encinal combined-cycle project in Texas should return $43bn to $45bn over 20 years. People Power Party lawmakers left the closed-door briefing asking who buys the power.
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Seoul's first statutory resource security plan promises a 50% Middle East crude share by 2035 and 13 more state-managed minerals, but the only money on the table this year is a freight subsidy capped at the levies refiners paid.
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The trade ministry takes the program to two National Assembly committees behind closed doors on the 22nd, five days later than planned, with a Texas gas plant, large reactors and Alaska LNG on the agenda.
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South Korea's Board of Audit and Inspection says the trade ministry called the compressed schedule unworkable and produced it anyway, and it priced the rushed rig charter at 4.3 billion won. Saturation came in at 6.3%.
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WTI at about $102 has widened the gap between Singapore product prices and the capped price Korean refiners may charge at home. The industry puts its losses at 5 trillion won. No first settlement has been completed.
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The trade ministry summoned Korea's four refiners on the 14th to weigh paying more of the freight gap on crude from the Americas, Africa and Southeast Asia. September and October cargoes are already more than 90% secured.
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Invest · September 12, 2026 · One report1 publisher
Invest · September 7, 2026 · One report1 publisher