KOSPI Breaks 7,000 Intraday · AI Price War Liberation Day Address · Southern Korea Flood-Drought Double Emergency

Conservative civic groups including Woori Republican Party and Free Unification Party held a rally of tens of thousands in the Gwanghwamun and Sungnyemun area. They demanded an end to election fraud, punishment of the National Election Commission, and resignation of the Lee Jae-myung government, marching to near Cheong Wa Dae.

Japan's ruling LDP senior officials carried out a group visit to Yasukuni Shrine — which enshrines Class-A war criminals — on Liberation Day, Aug 15, as reported by Sankei Shimbun on Aug 14. Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae chose not to make a personal visit.

Gyeonggi Province Education Superintendent Ahn Min-seok returned from an independence movement site tour (Aug 11-15) in Manchuria and the Russian Far East and announced a new direction for history education on Liberation Day, Aug 15. He stated his intent to embody the educational ideals that independence fighters envisioned.

The Ministry of Science and ICT selected 8 universities — Busan National, Seoul National, Yonsei, Yeungnam, Incheon National, Changwon National, POSTECH, and Hanyang — for its '2026 Research Security Capacity Building Support Program.' The program will establish dedicated research security organizations at each university to address risks from international joint research.

Youth (ages 15-29) employment fell by 191,000 year-over-year in July to 3.44 million, and the youth unemployment rate jumped 1.3 percentage points from 5.5% to 6.8% — the largest increase since January 2021. The Ministry of Labor attributed 60% of the decline to population shrinkage and 40% to reduced hiring.

The government plans to announce a youth employment recovery plan in August, including rapid support for ₩3 trillion-scale investments in key industries such as semiconductors and secondary batteries, as youth employment has remained in a slump for 45 consecutive months.

According to Statistics Korea, total employment in July rose 108,000 year-over-year to 29.13 million. The unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points to 2.6%, and manufacturing employment insurance enrollment continued to decline for the 14th consecutive month.

KOSPI rose 164.60 points (+2.42%) to close at 6,977.94 on Aug 14. It touched 7,010.86 intraday — the first time above 7,000 since July 24 — before paring some gains. Foreigners led the rally with net purchases exceeding ₩3 trillion.

US July PPI came in below market expectations. The KRW/USD rate opened at 1,417.5 but fell to 1,410.8 at close, pressured by foreign equity inflows and exporter USD selling.

The Financial Services Commission announced via the Aug 13 real estate package that single homeowners in the Seoul metro area who have never resided in their property will be barred from new jeonse loan guarantees and renewals starting January 2027.

Jungnang-gu topped the nationwide apartment price growth rankings in August. A unit at 'Sagajeong Central I-Park' (84㎡) was transacted at ₩1.54B on Aug 7, setting an all-time high. The previous record was ₩1.49B in 2021.

The government and the ruling party announced a rapid housing supply plan as part of the Aug 13 measures. The package also includes expanded non-apartment supply, financial support, ₩33T in PF guarantees, and relaxed LTV standards for relocation loans to support the construction sector.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and Korea Venture Investment launched a ₩1 trillion LP Growth Fund on Aug 13. The government's contribution ratio was reduced from 60% to 20% to increase private capital leverage. Naver, Hyosung, GS, and 15 other institutions are participating.

KakaoPay reported Q2 2026 revenue of ₩335.1B (+40.6% YoY), operating profit of ₩58.6B (+528%), and net profit of ₩49.6B (+251%), achieving a record quarterly result. Investment division growth of 99% and insurance division growth of 86% drove the profit surge.

Kia's union passed a strike authorization vote for the first time in six years, issuing an ultimatum to management. Key sticking points include wage increases as well as job protection clauses related to the introduction of manufacturing automation.

Global EV sales totaled 1.85 million units in July 2026, up 9% year-over-year. Europe surged 33% to 450,000 units on subsidy effects, while the US dropped 27% to 140,000 units following the expiration of federal tax credits.

The automotive industry stated on Aug 15 that Hyundai Motor and Kia will participate together in the 2026 Paris Motor Show (Oct 12-18) for the first time in eight years. Both companies plan to showcase new EV models and electrification strategies targeting the European market.

Google released Gemini 3.7 Flash on Aug 13. FrontierCode 1.1 Main score rose from 34.4% to 43.6%, DeepSWE v1.1 from 49% to 65.3%. Priced at $0.75 per million input tokens — half the previous Flash model — with a 1M-token context window.

OpenAI launched a limited 'Ultrafast' API tier powered by Cerebras infrastructure. GPT-5.6 Sol is offered at up to 14x the speed of standard processing, with up to 750 output tokens per second, targeting latency-sensitive workloads such as real-time software and autonomous agents.

SMIC's Q2 utilization rate rose to 93.7%, leading to price increases on some process nodes. Q2 revenue exceeded $3B for the first time, while quarterly net profit more than tripled year-over-year to $479.2M.

Microsoft patched 421 CVEs on Aug 12. CVE-2026-68820 was confirmed as a WinSock driver privilege escalation zero-day exploited by North Korea's Lazarus Group. Attackers can use this flaw to gain SYSTEM-level privileges with only local authentication and no user interaction required.

A CVSS 9.8-rated VMware vCenter directory traversal vulnerability is being actively exploited just five days after public disclosure. German security firm QUIRSO has identified 361 victim IPs across 47 countries; attackers are maintaining persistent remote access via malicious cron jobs and the open-source reverse_ssh tool.

The European Data Protection Supervisor issued an opinion on the proposed Europol regulation amendment. The amendment would expand Europol's authority to process personal data unrelated to criminal investigations and nearly double its budget to €3 billion, to which the Supervisor expressed opposition.

The SEC held a public meeting on Aug 14 to vote on whether to propose a rule creating a tailored public offering framework for certain crypto investment contracts. This is the first formal crypto rulemaking process under Chairman Paul Atkins, and the SEC stated that final adoption would take several months following a public comment period.

Goldman Sachs announced on Aug 12 that it will acquire options-based ETF specialist NEOS Investments for up to $2.25 billion. The acquisition targets include a Bitcoin income ETF (BTCI), an Ethereum income ETF (NEHI), and one other crypto-linked fund with combined AUM exceeding $1.1 billion.

US Bitcoin spot ETFs experienced two consecutive days of net outflows on Aug 12-13, totaling approximately $192 million. ARK 21Shares ARKB led outflows at $58.8M, followed by Fidelity FBTC at $55.1M and Grayscale GBTC at $36.3M.

President Lee Jae-myung presented Korea's new leap in the AI era as the key message of his 81st Liberation Day address. He stated that Korea respects the North Korean system and will not pursue absorption unification, and his remarks on an inter-Korean summit also drew attention.

President Trump signed an executive order on Aug 10 recommending that the combined MMR vaccine be administered as three separate shots. As no individual vaccines currently exist, clinical trials would be required. Public health experts stated there is no scientific basis for the claimed link to autism and opposed the order.

A George Mason University research team analyzed medical records of approximately 3 million people over 25 years and found that women diagnosed with endometriosis had a 46% higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than those without. The association was most pronounced in premenopausal and non-obese women.

A Charite Berlin research team reported in Nature Medicine that dronabinol was administered to 170 PTSD patients for 10 weeks. More than half reported reduced nightmares, and over a third experienced complete elimination of nightmares. The team stated that long-term studies are needed.

An MIT research team discovered an object designated 'MoM-BH*-1' in James Webb Space Telescope data. The team reported it is a new type of cosmic object — a structure with a black hole of about 100,000 solar masses wrapped in hydrogen — emitting 100 billion times more energy than any ordinary star.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Phase 5 (SDSS-V) released over 3 million new spectra in Data Release 20 (DR20). Data from Las Campanas Observatory in Chile was included for the first time, containing hundreds of thousands of rare stars, nebulae, X-ray sources, and supermassive black hole observations.

Up to 150mm of rain was forecast starting the afternoon of Aug 15 near the south coast and Jirisan area. The government moved to pre-emptively control hazardous areas such as campsites and streams and prepare for evacuation of vulnerable residents. Authorities stated that rain would spread to most of the country by early morning on Aug 16.

As the drought in South Jeolla and South Gyeongsang provinces continued, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety elevated the head of its interagency drought task force and created a dedicated 'Drought Response Unit.' Water tankers, pumps, and other national emergency resources were deployed to the affected areas.

2,121 ha of farmland in South Gyeongsang Province suffered drought damage, with Miryang's agricultural reservoir level at just 34.4% of its average. Unmun Dam in North Gyeongsang's Cheongdo was at 24.7%, the only reservoir in the country at 'severe' level, while Pohang changed its water intake point due to seawater intrusion.

About 14 months after the launch of Australia's home battery program, 507,651 households had installed batteries and wholesale electricity prices fell to roughly half their previous level. The government stated it will expand the program budget from A$2.3B to A$7.2B and aims to reach 2 million households by 2030.

According to the California Energy Commission, statewide battery storage capacity surpassed 21,112MW. In the first half of 2026, solar power generation use exceeded natural gas for the first time, with solar up 22% and natural gas down 51% compared to 2024.

According to a Carbon Pulse analysis, the rapid expansion of electric trucks in China is estimated to displace the equivalent of approximately 141 million barrels of oil demand in 2026.

Former SECRET NUMBER member DENISE released her solo single 'Kills Me' on Aug 15, marking her comeback. She is among the K-pop artists with releases scheduled for August and continues her solo activities.

Thai rookie group Kiismet released their debut single 'GIVE ME MORE' on Aug 15. kprofiles reported the debut as a notable example of K-pop's global expansion.

Korea's U17 women's volleyball team swept the Philippines 3-0 (25-21, 25-18, 25-14) in the round of 16 in Los Andes, Chile. Son Seo-yeon scored 19 points and Eo Min-seo added 15, as Korea advanced to the quarterfinals with six straight wins including the group stage. Their quarterfinal opponent is Turkey.

Korea's women's basketball team was dealt a 77-78 last-second defeat on Aug 14 in Tokyo, with Japan hitting a buzzer-beater with 0.2 seconds remaining. The team suffered back-to-back losses in the two-game away series held in preparation for the Asian Games and FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup.

As consumers shifted toward eating at home due to rising restaurant prices, E-mart's July rice sales rose 42% year-over-year. Basic side dish sales increased 36.6%, and sales of frozen vegetables (+12.4%) and fresh vegetables (+29.3%) also rose.

Nongshim raised factory prices on 43 products by an average of 5.8% from Aug 1, while CJ CheilJedang raised Hetbahn rice and dumplings by an average of 8% across 27 products. Coca-Cola Beverages Korea raised prices on 52 products by 7.2%, and TwoTwo Jur raised bread and cake prices on 76 products by 8.2%.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and 10 food companies including Nongshim, CJ CheilJedang, and Lotte Chilsung are running discounts of up to 57% on 3,838 products including ramen, beverages, and frozen desserts for the month of August, at large marts, convenience stores, and e-commerce platforms.