Frost appears on a chili plant as the temperature drops in Gangwon on Oct. 23.YONHAP
It's Friday. We made it! Here are the stories you need to know in Korea.
In today's news, we look at Cheongwang, a South Korean laser air defense weapon that could assist against drone warfare. In other stories, we explore Gongju and Buyeo for an insight into Korean history.
We also interview A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times and chairman of The New York Times Company, about the state of journalism and his organization's investment in independent reporting during his visit to Seoul. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Today's top story
BUSINESS
Not as strong as Iron Beam, but ready now: Can Korea's antidrone laser win over Europe, Middle East?
Firing a missile worth about $1 million at a drone that costs a few hundred dollars might seem like a losing trade. South Korea is betting that Cheongwang, a laser air defense weapon already in service, can fix that math, both against North Korean drones and as a new export product.
Interceptors such as South Korea’s Cheongung-II and the U.S. Patriot can shoot down drones, but using them against cheap drones in large numbers is widely seen as unsustainable, and stockpiles have already been strained by recent conflicts.
'Original reporting' critical to democracy's defense, says New York Times publisher
A.G. Sulzberger discusses press freedom under Donald Trump, AI-driven intellectual property theft and The New York Times’ investment in independent journalism during a visit to his paper's Asia hub in Seoul.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ BUSINESS
SK hynix delays Solidigm IPO amid market uncertainty and regulatory pushback
SK hynix has decided to postpone the initial public offering (IPO) of its NAND flash subsidiary Solidigm due to market volatility and opposition from financial authorities.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KOREA
Korean marathoner's honesty about period pain highlights lingering taboo in women's sports
Park Seo-yeon's candid post after racing through menstrual pain highlights a growing global movement for women athletes to speak openly about their bodies.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LIFESTYLE & ENTERTAINMENT
Nobel literature laureates' book sales soar after their win, but how long does the boom last?
According to data from Kyobo Book Centre, sales of Nobel laureates' works jumped between 51-fold and 909-fold in October, when the winners are announced, from 2015 to 2025, but most of their monthly sales fell to less than one-tenth of that by spring.
