▲ APR-1400 Freed From Restrictive Contract, Cleared for U.S. Nuclear Market

* 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.

1. 40% More Power Output at Lower Construction Cost: "Vietnam Bid Also Within Reach"

- Key summary: With the APR-1400 freed from the shackles of the restrictive contract signed with Westinghouse in the past and included among projects eligible for U.S. investment funds, forecasts are emerging that Korea's nuclear ecosystem can make a second leap forward. In the United States, the supply chain for the ESBWR reactor developed by Japan's Hitachi and the U.S. firm GE had collapsed, leaving no option other than Westinghouse's AP-1000, so the APR-1400 has effectively been added as an alternative. The APR-1400's capacity is 1.4 gigawatts, larger than the AP-1000's 1 to 1.1 GW, giving it 30% to 40% more power output even with a similar site footprint and construction period. Its thermal output is 3,983 megawatts thermal, about 16.6% higher than the AP-1000's 3,415 MWt, making it more thermally efficient. In addition, thanks to a solid supply chain built on localized reactor coolant pumps, steam generators, man-machine interface systems and turbines, the construction cost per kilowatt that Korea proposed during the bidding for the Czech Republic's Dukovany nuclear plant, where a final contract was signed last year, was reportedly about 30% lower than that of Electricite de France.

2. [Exclusive] LG Pushes EXAONE Exports to Central Asia and Middle East, Expanding AI Reach in Emerging Markets

- Key summary: LG has begun full-fledged AI model cooperation with emerging markets including Central Asia and the Middle East. LG AI Research signed an MOU with the government of Kazakhstan in the middle of this month to jointly develop a Kazakh-language model with local companies and universities using EXAONE technology, and will apply it to industry, energy, healthcare and logistics while also cooperating on talent development. Next month, it plans to sign an MOU on EXAONE BI business cooperation with a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund. EXAONE BI is a finance-focused model that analyzes some 8,000 listed companies. After landing the London Stock Exchange Group as a client in September last year, it plans to conduct a proof of concept in the Middle East before an official launch. According to the World Bank's 2026 World Development Report, English accounted for 61.1% of training datasets registered on platforms such as Hugging Face, while Arabic came to just 2.4% and Kazakh did not register in the statistics. Korean's share is also low at 2.2%, but Korean companies that have secured sovereign AI technology with their own models have emerged as key partners for emerging economies.

3. Chairmen Forgo the Holiday as the "2027 Management Clock" Speeds Up

- Key summary: Business group chairmen are touring operations at home and abroad even during the Chuseok holiday to review this year's businesses and begin mapping out next year's management plans. Samsung Electronics (005930) Chairman Jay Y. Lee will stay overseas during the holiday and attend the Korea Society Gala Dinner in New York on the 28th local time to congratulate Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on receiving the Van Fleet Award, and is expected to tour local sites and meet with client executives to review the expansion of the semiconductor and AI businesses. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won will accompany President Lee Jae-myung on a visit to Mexico on the 24th in his capacity as chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry before attending the same event, while LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo will join the economic delegation to Mexico and LS Group Chairman Koo Ja-eun will also travel to Mexico. Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor (005380) Group Chairman Euisun Chung is expected to remain in Korea to examine responses to U.S. tariffs and a plan to invest 125 trillion won domestically by 2030. Hanwha (000880) Group Chairman Seung-youn Kim and Vice Chairman Kim Dong-kwan plan to refine their management plans from home, while Hanwha is moving ahead with work to bundle defense, shipbuilding and space into a single growth axis.

4. Middle East Crude Dependence to Fall Below 50% by 2035; Critical Minerals Expanded From 38 to 51

- Key summary: The government will lower the Middle Eastern share of imported crude oil, which stood at about 70% last year, to below 50% by 2035. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy reviewed and finalized four agenda items at the sixth Resource Security Council meeting on the 23rd: the first basic plan for resource security, an adjustment to the fifth petroleum stockpiling plan, a designation plan for critical minerals and the first stockpiling plan for critical minerals. Given that 61% of the crude oil Korea imported last year passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the government will diversify both source countries and shipping routes. It will also reinstate through the end of the year an expanded import levy refund measure that raises the compensation rate for freight cost differences on crude from the Americas, Europe and Africa from about 25% to as much as 100%. In addition, it will add 13 items including phosphorus, fluorite, germanium and 10 rare earth elements to expand the list of critical minerals to 51, and raise the stockpiling target for minerals with vulnerable supply chains from the current 180 days to as many as 365 days. It will also introduce a concept of "total national available inventory" that encompasses private inventories and materials recovered from spent batteries.

5. NAVER and Brookfield Launch 10 Trillion Won AIDC Funding Drive With Phased Project Financing [Signal]

- Key summary: NAVER has teamed up with global asset manager Brookfield Asset Management to begin raising funds for an ultra-large artificial intelligence data center with total project costs exceeding 10 trillion won. Major commercial banks including KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana and Woori Bank, along with large brokerages such as NH Investment & Securities, are reviewing lending options from multiple angles, and a structure supplying funds through project financing in several phases in line with the business and construction schedule is seen as most likely. The project is built on a three-way partnership in which Nvidia participates in a $1 billion third-party allotment of new NAVER shares and Brookfield takes charge of $9 billion in financing. NAVER plans to use the funds to expand the power capacity of its Sejong data center, Gak Sejong, from 55 megawatts to 200 MW, and a plan under which banks would directly hold loan claims worth up to 3 trillion won without selling them down is also under consideration.

6. FSS Governor Lee Chan-jin Issues Another Warning on Financial Holding Company CEO Succession

- Key summary: Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chan-jin summoned financial holding company chairmen again just eight days after publicly criticizing succession procedures for financial company CEOs as inadequate, delivering another warning. At a meeting on the 23rd with the chairmen of eight domestic banking holding companies and the head of the Korea Federation of Banks, Lee said CEO selection procedures must identify the right person based on ability rather than being captured by particular factions or personal ties, and instructed them to lay out specific standards for selecting, vetting, evaluating and documenting candidate pools. With an estimated 70-plus CEOs of major financial holding company affiliates seeing their terms expire at the end of this year, Lee's repeated emphasis on succession has raised concerns in financial circles about infringement on management autonomy, with some reading it as pressure for replacements unrelated to performance or management continuity. Under regulatory pressure, BNK Financial Group has drawn up improvements requiring succession procedures at all subsidiaries to begin three months before a CEO's term expires, and Shinhan Financial Group has launched succession procedures for the heads of 12 subsidiaries whose terms end at the close of this year while expanding the role of its executive nomination committee.