Kim & Chang Again, Han Chan-sik as Senior Presidential Secretary for Civil Affairs.

• Senior secretary appointments were announced: Sung Ki-hong (former Yonhap News president) as Chief of Staff for Public Relations, Han Chan-sik (Kim & Chang lawyer) as Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs, Kim Kyung-ja (Woosuk University professor) as Senior Secretary for Social Affairs, Kang Geon-jak (Future Defense Strategy Committee member) as First Deputy Director of the National Security Office, and Song Ki-ho (former Senior Secretary for Economic Security) as Third Deputy Director.
• All three Senior Secretaries for Civil Affairs in the Lee Jae-myung administration are former prosecutors. Han Chan-sik investigated the Moon Jae-in administration’s blacklist case during his tenure as head of Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office.
• Critics call it an appointment that disregards the discomfort of pro-Moon factions.
• Some interpret it as Lee Jae-myung (President) — the biggest victim of political prosecutions — making appointments of unity and inclusion.
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What Matters Now.

“Semiconductor Wealth Cannot Be Absorbed by Real Estate.”.

• Kim Yong-beom (Blue House Policy Director) wrote on Facebook: “If the national wealth earned from semiconductors is absorbed by real estate and the fruits of growth are concentrated among the few, the boom will not last long.”
• “The benefits of prosperity flow upward, while the pain of austerity flows downward,” he argued, emphasizing that “reasonably adjusting property and capital gains taxes is necessary and the right direction.”
• “Historically, the most difficult moments were not during recessions, but when averages improved while the middle began to falter,” he noted. “Still, there is no reason for pessimism”—a declaration of intent to confront challenges head-on.
• According to the Land Freedom Research Institute, Korea’s effective property tax rate is 0.15% of market value—half the OECD average of 0.33%.
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Raising Property and Capital Gains Taxes?

• There are strong speculations that increasing the comprehensive real estate tax burden by raising the ratio of fair market value is a likely option.
• Adjusting the nominal tax rates for the comprehensive real estate tax is also being discussed.
• There is also a possibility of reducing special long-term holding deductions for non-resident single-homeowners.
• The government is also reviewing measures to reduce tax benefits for rental business operators.

“The Last Resort, They Said.”.

• Chosun Ilbo’s front-page headline. Jeong Su-yeon (professor at Jeju National University) pointed out, “Past attempts to curb real estate through taxes all failed, leaving only the side effect of increased tenant burdens.” The criticism continues: “Raising holding taxes while also increasing capital gains taxes is a self-defeating move that discourages selling.”
• In an editorial, Chosun Ilbo emphasized, “What the government should do now is not one-sided tax hikes that distort the market, but to focus surplus semiconductor tax revenue on expanding housing supply for the homeless, low-income, and youth—prioritizing orthodox market stabilization measures.”
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50 Trillion Won to Flow into Real Estate by Next Year.

• One-third of Samsung Electronics’ performance bonuses—7.6 trillion won—can be liquidated in the first year. SK Hynix holds 15.6 trillion won.
• The two companies’ internal loan programs allow approximately 29 trillion won and 1.4 trillion won, respectively.
• Samsung Electronics offers loans of up to 500 million won per person at 1.5% annual interest. Applying the 45% rate of non-homeowning households in the capital region to its 128,000 employees yields the 29 trillion won figure.
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Deep Dive.

From Income Inequality to Asset Inequality.

• Results from the National Assembly Research Service. Tracking and analyzing four inequality factors—income, assets, education, and health—showed that income accounted for 39% in 2011, dropping to 33% in 2024, while assets rose to 40%.
• Among millennials, asset inequality accounts for a larger 47%.
• The overall inequality index fell from 0.190 in 2023 to 0.185 in 2024, but the effect of asset inequality grew.
• Kye Bong-oh (Kookmin University professor) noted, “Income-focused redistribution policies alone have limited effects in mitigating inequality.”
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Salmon Soju Party? Lee Hwa-young’s False Testimony.

• We’ll have to wait for further developments, but the court sentenced Lee Hwa-young (former Gyeonggi Province vice governor) to four months in prison for allegedly giving false testimony at the National Assembly.
• Among seven jurors, four judged guilty, three not guilty.
• The People Power Party claimed, “The Democratic Party’s key argument for dismissing the indictment in the North Korea remittance case has collapsed.”
• The Democratic Party argued, “The verdict is guilty in form but innocent in substance,” adding, “It’s clear this was a politically motivated prosecution.”
• Lee Jae-sung (Hankyoreh columnist) noted, “A guilty verdict on perjury doesn’t erase the fact that this was a retaliatory indictment by prosecutors.”
• While the appellate trial remains to be seen, for now, the Democratic Party faces an awkward situation in pushing to dismiss Lee Jae-myung’s indictment.

Jeong Cheong-rae + Kim Eo-jun’s Issue Switch.

• The original issue was [Who is Lee Jae-myung’s (President) successful partner], but Lee Jae-myung drew a line, stating Jeong Cheong-rae is not.
• Jeong Cheong-rae’s Facebook post, “Complete abolition of supplementary investigative authority,” may be an attempt to shift the issue. Kim Eo-jun (Ddanzi Ilbo CEO) claimed, “The Democratic Party convention is a war over supplementary investigative authority.”
• Lim Jang-hyeok (JoongAng Ilbo Political Affairs Bureau Chief) analyzed, “If they can reframe the core issue as [Who is the right candidate for complete abolition of supplementary investigative authority], they might stand a chance even in a direct clash with the president.”
• A Democratic Party lawmaker met by JoongAng Ilbo said, “Abolishing supplementary investigative authority is an issue Jeong Cheong-rae has preempted, but fighting over it won’t bring gains.”
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Will Jeong Cheong-rae Resign on the 24th?

• If he seeks re-election, the resignation deadline is approaching.
• Jeong Cheong-rae (Democratic Party leader) and Kim Min-seok (Prime Minister) met at a workshop for local election winners and subtly clashed.
• Kim Min-seok remarked, “The results are difficult to declare a perfect victory,” while Jeong Cheong-rae responded, “Mount Everest is high because it rests on the Himalayas. Your victories may stem from personal merit, but they also owe to the party—the Himalayas—that supported you.”
• Jeong’s strategy focuses on consolidating the party base, whereas Kim’s aims to expand centrist appeal.

Another Take.

Jeonse Supply-Demand Index Worst in Five Years.

• Seoul apartment jeonse prices rose 3.6% through May this year. Monthly rents also increased 3.4%.
• This year’s supply of shared housing units is 27,058 households—half the 49,973 from last year. Next year, it will shrink further to 17,197.
• Lee Jae-myung (President) explained, “Multi-homeowners used to rent out properties, but now they’ve sold them, reducing jeonse supply. Yet, as non-homeowners buy these properties to live in, jeonse demand also decreases accordingly.”
• The Hankyoreh noted, “Some argue that when supply falls short of demand—as it does now—jeonse-to-sale conversions further worsen supply-demand imbalances.”

Rising Numbers of “Cheongpo” Households.

• Short for “cheongyak po-gi” (subscription abandonment). Subscription accounts, once nearing 29 million, have dropped to 25.93 million. Analysis shows significant cancellations among long-term holders.
• A Real Today source explained, “Core areas like Seoul are called ‘lottery subscriptions’ where profits can be expected if selected, but competition is so fierce that winning chances are low.” They added, “Rising subscription prices and economic downturns have increased financial burdens for genuine buyers, leading to more subscription account cancellations.”
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Warsh and Greenspan.

• AI infrastructure investment could either fuel or temper inflation. Will productivity innovation allow supply to catch up with demand? Ultimately, it may be a matter of timing.
• Alan Greenspan (former Federal Reserve Chair) held rates steady in 1996 and raised them in 1999. Then the dot-com bubble burst.
• If productivity innovation is believed to be imminent, future income can be pulled forward. Austan Goolsbee (Chicago Fed President) thus sees it as time to raise rates.
• Christopher Waller (Fed Governor) argues that if pulling forward future income is impossible, there is no need to worry about overheating.
• Kevin Warsh (former Federal Reserve Chair) believes Alan Greenspan in 1996 was correct. The Wall Street Journal noted that the current situation resembles 1999 more than 1996.
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Memory Armageddon Has Begun.

• Smartphone, game console, and laptop prices are rising simultaneously.
• This is due to increases in DRAM and NAND flash memory prices. The latest Microsoft Surface Pro model costs $1,599—$600 more than its predecessor. The Nintendo Switch 2 is $499, up $50. The Sony PS5 Pro is $900, a $150 increase.
• Projections suggest the iPhone 18 Pro, set for September release, will cost $1,299.
• Yoon Ha-ryong (Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman) stated, “Demand is shifting from HBM to NAND.”
• Building a semiconductor fab takes 2–3 years. This means shortages will persist for the foreseeable future. According to Circular Technologies, the contract price for Micron’s memory chips used in data centers has surged from $350 to $1,300 in a year.
• Brad Gastwirth (Circular Global Research Lead) remarked, “Ultimately, consumers will bear the loss.”
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“We Created a Monster.”.

• There was a brief era of chanting “token-maxxing,” but now we must worry about token-consuming hippos.
• Moving from flat-rate plans to token-based billing makes using fewer tokens a competitive advantage.
• One company reported a 7x jump in fees on the first day of switching to pay-per-token.
• Uber capped monthly token spending per employee at $1,500.
• Walmart imposed limits on internal AI agent token usage.
• Amazon instructed employees: “Don’t use AI to use AI.”
• Goldman Sachs forecasts token consumption will grow 24x by 2030.
• Chip shortages will persist for the next 12–18 months, according to their analysis.
• The Financial Times noted that Chinese cost competition is a wild card—
• Chinese AI models have already surpassed US models in token consumption.
• Prices cannot keep up.
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Why the National Pension Service Is Selling Stocks.

• Despite raising its Korean stock holdings from 14.9% to 20.8%, rising share prices pushed the ratio beyond limits. While an additional 6% increase is technically possible, the ratio has already neared 30%.
• A grace period is in place until the end of June, but with mandatory sales starting in July, speculation suggests preemptive selling. From the 16th to the 19th, it offloaded ₩1.2 trillion worth of shares over four consecutive days.
• The Korea Economic Daily criticized in an editorial, “A one-sided strategy of expanding holdings increases systemic risks across financial markets.” As the National Pension Service reduced its government bond holdings, Treasury yields spiked. Barclays analyzed, “The fund is acting as an amplifier—not a stabilizer—of financial markets.”
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310,000 Shell Accounts in One Year.

• 876 new ones appear daily.
• The Dong-A Ilbo analyzed 2,053 corporate accounts from the Financial Supervisory Service’s debt cancellation notices and found multiple accounts linked to a single 31-year-old man. Visiting the company, they discovered a service renting addresses for 10,000 won per month. A single mailbox was tied to 63 companies.
• Corporate accounts have no transfer limits, so they sell for high prices. Luring credit delinquents with promises—“Create a company, and we’ll loan you 300 million won”—they obtain business licenses and create shell accounts in under a week.
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The Fix.

Control Rooms Assign Hospitals, No More “Hot-Potatoing.”.

• Pilot projects are underway in the Honam region. If transport delays seem imminent, the situation management center intervenes to assign a receiving hospital. For three months, there were zero “hot-potato” cases.
• Instances of paramedics repeatedly contacting multiple hospitals also dropped—from 5.8 hospitals last year to 3.8 during the pilot. Analysis suggests 37 severe patients were saved in one month.
• Lee Jung-gyu (Ministry of Health and Welfare Policy Director) explained, “There were no cases of sending patients without prior contact and demanding unconditional acceptance.”
• The system will expand nationwide starting in September.
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Seogwipo’s Clothing Collection Bin Experiment.

• Private companies were allowed to collect them, paying ₩28,000 per bin. The city expects over ₩30 million in non-tax revenue this year.
• By integrating used clothing collection into public management, all illegally installed bins were removed.

Social Media Bans: Age Verification Is the Hurdle.

• To ban under-16s, platforms must prove users are over 16. The UK is in turmoil over the proposed under-16 social media ban. Though unrelated, speculation also swirls that Keir Starmer (UK Prime Minister) may resign.
• In Australia, which started earlier, 7 out of 10 under-16 accounts remain accessible. There’s also a balloon effect as users migrate to unregulated platforms. Some call it “misguided hope disguised as protection.” Dave Schilling (Guardian Editor) quipped, “The loopholes are wide enough for a vintage Sherman tank division to march through.”
• Silkie Carlo (Big Brother Watch Director) criticized, “Age-gating shifts liability to corporations while absolving them of design responsibility.”
• Tom Crawford (YouTuber) argued, “YouTube is where we all go to learn” and “the 2026 version of TV.”
• An anti-ban e-petition surpassed 100,000 signatures within days. Critics also note that scroll addiction isn’t exclusive to children.
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ICYMI.

Will the Hynix-Samsung Era Arrive?

• SK Hynix’s market cap hit 206 trillion won. As of the 21st closing price, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix’s market caps were 224.8 trillion and 197 trillion won, respectively—closing the gap to 88%.
• Combining Samsung Electronics’ 18 affiliates brings the total to 268.2 trillion won, while SK Hynix’s 19 affiliates sum to 225.8 trillion won.
• Expectations are high that SK Hynix’s upcoming American Depositary Receipt (ADR) listing will trigger a stock revaluation.

Free Cleaning, at the Cost of Your Privacy.

• They send someone to clean and cook—free of charge. The catch: you must wear a camera-equipped hat to record the work.
• It’s a service called Shift by microAGI. The company collects data on behalf of physical AI firms, which use it to train robots. Burjan Kilich (Shift founder) said, “We’ve handed over countless data points without any compensation,” adding, “Shift is an honest, transactional approach that pays.”
• Critics call it “a devilishly clever way to sell privacy violations.” Concerns also arise: is this expanding the data-bribing market?
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/bin/rm -r -f *.

• One line of code almost prevented “Toy Story 2” from ever seeing the light of day.
• It’s a command to delete (rm) all files and directories (*) in every subdirectory (r) in force mode (f)—a powerful command that executes immediately without confirmation.
• In 1998, when “Toy Story 2” was being produced, there was no concept of the cloud, so hundreds of thousands of work files were stored on Linux computers.
• But someone accidentally wiped the entire system while trying to clean up their personal directory.
• “You don’t often see a company vanish in seconds right before your eyes,” said Oren Jacob (Pixar Technical Director).
• Two striking events occurred that day.
• First, Ed Catmull (Pixar co-founder) remained remarkably calm: “Blaming someone doesn’t help anything.”
• Second, when they realized no backups existed, they discovered that Sussman had files from his paternity leave work still at home.
• He wrapped the computer in a blanket, secured it with a seatbelt, and drove it in.
• A company that nearly collapsed was saved in that moment.
• Ultimately, 30,000 files were recovered, but the film was completed only after several more near-death experiences.
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Worth Reading.

“The Purpose of a Party Is to Seize Power.”.

• Lee Jae-myung (President) said this during a briefing. He also urged the Democratic Party to “maintain our ideals and values while drawing maximum empathy from as many people as possible.”
• Though he did not mention Lee Jung-kyu (Democratic Party Leader), his emphasis that “state affairs remain unchanged” could be an indirect expression of discontent—implying the party is responsible for the recent drop in approval ratings.
• Kim Hoe-kyung (Political Affairs Bureau Chief, The Korea Herald) assessed it as “a public declaration to show a changed relationship between the party and the Blue House over the past year.” The analysis adds, “By positioning himself as a champion of party sovereignty and ideological clarity while appealing to party sentiment, Lee Jung-kyu contrasts with Lee Jae-myung’s emphasis on inclusivity, pragmatism, and expanding public consensus through results. The stage is set for a battle over legitimacy.”
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What If Someone Suddenly Flips the Switch?

• Claude’s outage has left a new agenda: AI sovereignty.
• Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) emphasized, “The priority should not be just frontier models but building a frontier ecosystem,” adding, “Only then can value flow widely to every enterprise, every industry, and every nation.”
• Park Won-ik (The Milk IP Division Head) pointed out, “The starting point of AI sovereignty is confronting who holds the power switch of AI—and what is fundamentally needed to build an ecosystem.”
• Lim Jong-in (Korea University Professor) stressed, “What we need now is open self-reliance: securing stable access to world-class AI assets while accumulating independent specialized capabilities.”
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An International Book Fair Theme Co-Written with AI.

• “One who refuses safe answers and leaps into the unknown a million times. One who gazes at new fire, forges greater questions in the soul’s forge, and knocks on the door of worlds yet to exist. That is Homo duduri.”
• The “duduri” in Homo duduri is a mythical being from old Korean texts. Kim Yeon-su (author) reportedly wrote it by training an AI on ten classics from the Gutenberg Project and engaging in dialogue.
• “AI closes doors of possibility with the most probable answer. Humans reopen them with bigger questions. Human thought has always advanced into wider worlds not because of answers pointed to by probability, but because of questions beyond those answers. And the record of those great questions is the book.”
• Controversy arose over writing an introduction with AI in an era of book extinction. Kim Yeon-su said, “The effort of writing prompts and reading answers felt less creative and more like repetitive labor.”
• Park Jong-seo (Head of Culture & Sports Department, The Korea Economic Daily) emphasized, “In the AI era, reading is not a hobby but a matter of survival.”
• Early-bird tickets sold out. It runs five days from Wednesday the 24th to Sunday the 28th at COEX in Samseong-dong.
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