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The Seoul Metropolitan Government began nighttime scheduled service of its driverless autonomous bus CheonggyeA01 from 7 p.m. on October 22. This marks the first time in South Korea that an autonomous bus without a driver's seat operates a scheduled route at night.
SK hynix officially announced on October 23 that it has stopped reviewing a US stock exchange listing for its subsidiary Solidigm. The company said it weighed existing shareholders' interests and the expansion of shareholder value as the criteria for the listing decision.
A Nikkei corporate survey found that 21.9% of 1,084 major Japanese companies responded that they might consider reducing new college-graduate hiring three years from now, as reported in late November. However, the figure does not directly attribute the possibility to AI; it reflects respondents saying cuts are 'possible' or under 'consideration.'
Ahead of the 2026 US midterm elections, 220 AI-generated political ads worth about 181.9 billion won have been tallied, 81% of them sponsored by Republicans. The overall ad market is projected to reach $11.6 billion (about 16 trillion won), surpassing the 2024 presidential election to become the largest on record.
The FBI is considering additional economic espionage charges against Alfozan, a Saudi national charged with installing a wiretap device in an OpenAI employee meeting room. The Wall Street Journal reported this on October 19, local time, citing anonymous sources; the new charge would be heavier than the existing impersonation and wiretap counts.
Humanoid robot firm Figure AI and cloud provider EnScale officially announced a computing contract worth up to $20 billion (about 28 trillion won) on September 3, 2026. Some recent reports have presented the previously announced deal as if it were a new alliance, prompting claims of distorted figures; the 4.6 trillion won figure represents part of the deal, while 8 trillion won is a stated expansion target ceiling.
The share of Korean companies in automotive semiconductors stands at roughly 3–5%, a figure supported by statements from government and Hyundai Motor Group officials. However, the statistical definition of the figure has not been confirmed in public documents, so rigorous verification remains outstanding.
The Trump administration set a target of adding 400 GW of nuclear power capacity by 2050 through Executive Order 14318 in May, and the Department of Energy is executing restarts of existing reactors such as Vogtle and Palisades as well as new construction. Official documents explicitly name AI as one of several motives for the expansion, but the actual drivers of new additions are not solely attributable to AI.
According to US and Korean security authorities, North Korean IT workers have been found attempting remote employment at overseas companies using AI-generated forged identity documents. In South Korea, the National Police Agency identified one suspected case of fraudulent employment in 2025 and has begun investigating.
Market forecasts suggest the combined Q3 2026 operating profit of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix could exceed 180 trillion won. However, both companies' official earnings announcements have not yet concluded, so the figure remains unconfirmed, with some brokerages presenting scenarios of a miss.