※ [Global Morning Briefing] summarizes global news reported by Seoul Economic Daily.
Oil, Bonds Rattled by Iran Strikes While G20 Stays Silent
Crude oil topped $95 a barrel and European government bond yields climbed after the United States struck Iran during New York trading hours, adding to warning signs for the global economy. U.S. Central Command said it hit Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets and two tankers owned by the Iranian government in response to Iranian attacks on ships and U.S. forces in the Strait of Hormuz. It was the first time U.S. forces struck during stock market hours and hit tankers, after previously confining strikes to periods after the New York close to limit market shocks. President Donald Trump warned in a Fox News interview that the United States would destroy Iran as a state if further attacks occurred.
Iran retaliated immediately by firing ballistic missiles at a U.S. military base in Jordan, and reports emerged that Russia had quietly supported Iran's development of hypersonic cruise missiles. Brent crude jumped 4.6% in a single day to close at $94.65 a barrel, then rose above $95 intraday on the 2nd, while West Texas Intermediate also broke through the $90 level. The oil surge pushed the probability of a U.S. rate increase in September to 68%, and Trump summoned refining industry executives to the White House to press them to lower prices.
At the same time, 10-year government bond yields in France, Britain and Germany each climbed to their highest levels since 2008, marking the steepest increase since the global financial crisis. Major economies whose national debt already exceeds gross domestic product face a sharp rise in interest costs, while companies including Big Tech face higher funding costs on $1.5 trillion of corporate bonds already issued. Meanwhile, the Group of 20 finance ministers meeting chaired by the United States went no further than pointing to China's trade imbalances, drawing criticism for failing to offer practical solutions to fiscal deficits and geopolitical instability.
Chey Tae-won Eyes Japan, and Kioxia Too
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said the group is considering building new plants overseas, including in Japan, to address a shortage of memory chips for data centers, and plans to announce specific investment policies this year.
In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun on the 2nd, Chey said memory chips for data centers are in short supply by 20% to 30%, making it difficult to meet growing demand through investment in South Korea alone. He added that Japan is a highly attractive candidate in terms of risk management and cultural factors, and that the group has already received proposals from several local governments seeking to host a plant. He did not identify a specific site, though earlier reports said SK hynix was considering building a memory plant in Miyagi Prefecture.
Chey also took a positive view of potential cooperation with Kioxia, the Japanese NAND flash maker in which SK hynix (000660.KS) holds a stake. He described Kioxia as a company with many strengths and outlined the possibility of cooperation in joint production, research and development, and supply chain sharing. SK hynix holds Kioxia convertible bonds at a level that would secure most voting rights, effectively making it the largest shareholder.
Full-scale cooperation between the two companies would likely reshape the NAND flash market. According to Counterpoint Research, second-quarter NAND flash market share by shipments was 25% for Samsung Electronics, 22% for SK hynix, 14% for China's Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) and 14% for Kioxia, with YMTC entering third place by a narrow margin for the first time. Because the combined share of SK hynix and Kioxia would exceed that of first-ranked Samsung Electronics, the industry sees SK hynix as seeking to strengthen its competitiveness through cooperation with the NAND specialist. Kioxia said it is already working with SK hynix on magnetoresistive memory (MRAM) research and development and intends to maintain the relationship.
Power Consumed by AI Turns Data Centers Into a Battleground
A tour of a facility run by Equinix, the world's largest colocation data center company, in San Jose showed that power consumption by artificial intelligence servers has risen as much as 27-fold in just five years.
At the San Jose campus visited on the 1st, reaching the server racks required passing through five stages of security screening, and the servers inside carried no company names or specifications in order to protect client confidentiality. Bill Strong, senior vice president of U.S. IBX operations at Equinix — IBX is the company's data center brand — said no names or signs are posted because customers run their core businesses there.
Founded in 1998, Equinix operates 110 data centers in the Americas and more than 280 worldwide, holding the top share of the colocation data center market. Unlike hyperscalers, it provides only power, cooling and networking infrastructure, with customers supplying core equipment such as AI chips themselves. The San Jose campus covered in this report, made up of four buildings, has total power capacity of 60 megawatts, short of the gigawatt-scale campuses of hyperscalers but serving a range of Silicon Valley companies as clients.
Preparations for power failures also stood out. Fiber-optic cables are duplicated along eastern and western routes so that communications are not cut off if one path fails. Under normal conditions, fuel cells run on natural gas to generate power, and if an earthquake or blackout occurs, large diesel generators start up and restore power within one second, the company said. To manage server heat, indirect evaporative cooling keeps indoor temperatures in the low 20s Celsius, while chilled-water piping is applied to servers running the latest AI chips, which generate more heat. Strong cited advancing cooling infrastructure, securing power and shortening construction periods as the key challenges ahead for the data center industry.
Coupang Asks Why a Korean Matter Is in New York, as Class Action Hearing Opens
At the first hearing in a U.S. class action over Coupang's large-scale personal data breach, plaintiffs and the defense clashed sharply over jurisdiction.
At a pre-motion conference held on the 1st at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, presiding Judge Ann M. Donnelly asked what Coupang's information security case had to do with the Eastern District of New York, questioning whether the court should rule on a matter in which nothing happened in the United States. Donnelly repeatedly pressed on whether agreement to Coupang's terms of use is possible in the United States, which entity's platform consumers use — U.S.-based Coupang Inc. or its Korean subsidiary — and whether any of the named plaintiffs reside in the Eastern District of New York.
Lawyers from the law firms Daeryun and SJKP, representing the plaintiffs, countered that jurisdiction is not an issue because Coupang Inc. is a U.S. corporation listed on the New York stock market and the parent company's leadership influences the Korean entity. They also cited Coupang Inc.'s reporting of the Korean subsidiary's data breach to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as grounds for the Eastern District court to handle the case.
Coupang's lawyers countered that the suit should be dismissed because the incident occurred at the Korean subsidiary. Their argument was that the parent company, Coupang Inc., and Korean Coupang are strictly separate companies, so the suit cannot stand in the United States, and they also argued that because the Korean government and courts are already investigating the case, it is not a matter to be litigated twice in a U.S. court.
The proceeding was a pre-motion conference, corresponding to a preparatory hearing in Korean civil litigation, at which the presiding judge summons both sides in person to define the issues before full argument begins. If the court decides to take up the case in earnest, the main trial is expected to begin around next year.
