▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items for each reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Korea-U.S. Nuclear Stake Talks: Korea and the United States are locked in last-minute wrangling over the acquisition of a stake in U.S. nuclear power company Westinghouse, tied to a $200 billion investment package in the United States. Washington seeks to draw in Korea's nuclear industry ecosystem, while Seoul argues that a minority stake without management participation is meaningless, leaving the two sides at an impasse.
■ Rare Earth Supply Chain Diversification: With the end of China's grace period on additional rare earth export controls approaching in November, the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources has launched helicopter surveys to find new domestic resources. Supply chain diversification is spreading across all fronts, from expanding overseas procurement channels and stockpiling to full-scale domestic resource exploration.
■ Debate Over Slowing AI Development: As major artificial intelligence industry leaders successively call for slowing the pace of advanced AI development, debate over their motives is intensifying. Critics argue that companies preparing for initial public offerings have an underlying interest in easing financial burdens and blocking latecomers from catching up.
[Top News for Corporate CEOs]
1. Korea and U.S. in Last-Minute Standoff Over Westinghouse Stake, With Board Seats the Key Issue
- Key summary: Korea and the United States are in final-stage negotiations over the size of Korea's stake investment in Westinghouse and whether it will secure voting rights, alongside talks on investment in the United States. Washington was initially reported to have asked Korea to acquire a 20% stake, but negotiations are said to be proceeding at a lower level. The United States views Korea's nuclear industry ecosystem as necessary for Westinghouse to pursue nuclear projects around the world, while Korea is focused on securing control over intellectual property rights, given that Westinghouse holds the original technology for light-water reactors such as the APR-1400. Meanwhile, the two countries are reported to be set to sign an investment agreement as early as the 18th, which includes a plan for Korea to invest in the construction of eight large nuclear reactors in the United States.
2. With China's Rare Earth Controls Looming, Korea Searches for Resources in Chungnam and Sejong
- Key summary: The Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources has designated roughly 225 square kilometers stretching from Jeonui in Sejong to the Gongju area in Chungcheongnam Province as a promising new rare earth zone and has begun airborne radiometric and magnetic surveys. The institute plans to fly a total of 951 kilometers through the end of October to gather data before selecting areas with promising deposits. Last year, China expanded its export controls to cover finished magnets, refining technology and third-country transactions, and introduced extraterritorial controls requiring licenses even for overseas products containing 0.1% or more of Chinese rare earths, with enforcement deferred until Nov. 10. Korea's dependence on China for rare earth raw material imports stood at around 50% in 2025, while China's share of imports of materials and components topped 90% for the first time since 2017. This has prompted calls to build non-Chinese supply chains not only for raw material procurement but also for downstream processes such as separation and refining, metal and alloy production, and magnet manufacturing.
3. Taking Away the Ladder for Latecomers: Race to Seize Leadership in AI Standards
- Key summary: Debate flared after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged that the pace of development be moderated so that safeguards can keep up with technological progress, drawing responses from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, xAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. But David Sacks, chair of the White House science and technology advisory council, noted that asking the government for the regulations one wants can look like regulatory capture. Analysts also say that easing the development race would allow companies to cut massive spending on graphics processing units and data centers while maintaining revenue from existing models, buying time to improve profitability for firms pursuing listings. Anthropic is accelerating plans for a Nasdaq listing at the end of October, having secured Nvidia as a core investor and is in talks to raise $10 billion, while OpenAI has raised its projected spending on AI computing infrastructure through 2030 to $750 billion from $600 billion.
[Reference News for Corporate CEOs]
4. Hyosung Heavy Wins 386.5 Billion Won Transformer Orders From Two U.S. Big Tech Firms
- Key summary: Hyosung Heavy Industries (298040) said on the 15th that it had signed contracts worth a combined 386.5 billion won to supply ultra-high-voltage transformers to two U.S. big tech companies. The equipment will be installed at AI data centers under construction in the southern and northern United States, comprising 220 billion won worth of 765-kilovolt ultra-high-voltage transformers and 166.5 billion won worth of 345-kilovolt units. According to Goldman Sachs, U.S. data center power demand will grow an average of 15% annually through 2030, with about $50 billion (roughly 66 trillion won) in investment expected for new power infrastructure. Cumulative new orders through last month reached about 9.3 trillion won, and Hyosung Heavy Industries raised its annual order target to 12 trillion won from 8.4 trillion won. Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Hyun-joon said, "With the AI era, an explosion in power infrastructure demand has brought a supercycle for the first time in 60 years," setting a goal of entering the global top three within five years.
5. Another Intervention in Personnel: FSS Chief Says Bank CEO Succession Process Falls Short
- Key summary: Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin said at an executive meeting on the 15th that succession procedures for subsidiary chief executives drawn up by holding companies' subsidiary CEO nomination committees were inadequate and that the role of subsidiary executive nomination committees was also limited, adding that the FSS would strengthen its reviews. According to the FSS, the eight domestic banking holding companies took an average of 45 days from the start of succession procedures to selecting a final candidate, with face-to-face assessment limited to a single interview — falling short of global firms that conduct multi-rater evaluations and multiple interviews starting one to two years in advance. A total of 54 affiliate CEOs see their terms expire at the end of this year, including 10 at KB Financial Group, 12 at Shinhan Financial Group, 13 at Hana Financial Group, 12 at Woori Financial Group and seven at NH Nonghyup Financial Group, with the terms of all major bank CEOs coming to an end. Some read the FSS intervention at a time when personnel decisions are sensitive as leaving financial firms with little choice but to defer to regulators.
6. Human-AI "Dual Brain" Collaboration Seen Boosting Output by 100 Billion Won a Year
- Key summary: SK Innovation (096770) is implementing a next-generation operating system called "Dual Brain" at its Ulsan Complex, combining AI computing power with the experience of veteran engineers. Under the setup, AI preemptively detects anomalies in processes and equipment and proposes responses, field engineers make the final decision after comprehensive review, and those judgments are accumulated as data and fed back into the AI's next analysis. The 60-year-old Ulsan Complex is Korea's largest crude oil processing facility, refining 840,000 barrels a day across 98 integrated processes, with 3,000 workers a day carrying out some 330,000 maintenance and repair jobs annually. The company expects productivity gains of about 100 billion won a year, centered on its equipment diagnostics platform SKADI and its safety, health and environment control platform SHEILD, and is also considering commercializing the systems externally.
▶Read the article: U.S. 10-Year Yield Breaches 5% Line as Market Bets on Rate Hikes
▶Read the article: Korea and U.S. in Last-Minute Standoff Over Westinghouse Stake, With Board Seats the Key Issue
