Korea

In South Korea they offered $14,000 to young people in exchange for them getting married. The young people didn’t care

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With $14,000 you can plug holes, take a few months off to travel the world or invest in that business that has been on your mind for years. What you won’t be able to do is pair two South Koreans to get married, start a home, and have children with whom to help the country get out of the crisis. deep crisis birth rate in which it has been immersed for years. We know this because in Korea there are administrations that already they have pulled the checkbook and reached those figures (more than 10,000 dollars) in their efforts to act as matchmakers. All without success. What’s more, this effort by administrations to encourage couples is having a peculiar effect: it has made singleness a real business. A matter of love… and money. In its efforts to get out of the demographic slump in which South Korea has been mired for some time, it has not hesitated to draw on its checkbook. Their reasoning is simple: if the birth rate can be encouraged with money, the Government is willing to put it on the table. In recent months, the country’s authorities have proposed handing over large ‘baby checks’ to its citizens, offer tax incentives to families with children, expand the parental leave or even guarantee that new mothers have access to select food. Another of the country’s great bets has been to match its young people. And that has been so much to create dating programs specifically designed for singles to find love and make it easy for them financially, offering them money so that the cost of a romantic dinner is not an obstacle. It may sound exaggerated, but there is one fact that explains it: in South Korea couples and birth rates go hand in hand. So much so that less than 5% of babies are born out of wedlock. How much money are we talking about? Very much. Many of South Korea’s matchmaking programs come from regional organizations, so photography can vary from one area of ​​the country to another; But it comes with taking a quick look at Google to see news about cities or districts that are trying to raise their birth rate with very expensive matchmaking programs. Recently we were talking to you of the case of Seoul, where the Metropolitan Government was studying giving 700 euros to couples who get married there. It’s a lot. Although not as much as in other cities. In Busan, one of the main metropolitan areas of South Korea and which is suffering the effects of the demographic crisis in a way particularly hardhave gone a step further by blessing new couples with hundreds of dollars. What does that translate into? In which money stops being an obstacle to finding a girlfriend (or boyfriend). In June Korea Herald informed that one of Busan’s districts, Saha-gu, was planning a pilot project with local singles born between 1981 and 2001, offering them $360 (to spend on dates) just to ‘make match’ with someone That is, each couple that left the event holding hands and with plans to see each other again would add $700 to their romance. One figure: $14,000. Those $360 per person to enjoy as a couple were just the first part of Saha-gu’s program. The idea was to increase support as the relationship progressed until reaching the big wedding gift: 20 million won in advance for couples who say ‘I do’, about $13,600. The district was even willing to offer newlyweds a larger deposit if they decided to buy a house or help them with rent. Such a bet is better understood in light of the demographic tables of the metropolitan city of Busan: if at the beginning of the 90s it exceeded 3.8 million inhabitantsin 2010 it was at 3.4 million. The trend does not clash with that of the country as a whole, which at the end of 2024 became a “super-aged society”, with 20% of its population over 65 years of age. Do these aids work? That was the big question that was left hanging… and it just answered The Wall Street Journal (TWSJ) with a report in which the title is almost a sentence: “Not even a $14,000 government aid can get South Korean singles to get married.” Despite the promise of a $14,000 wedding gift, Saha-gu’s program was not very successful. TWSJ assures that no participant demanded that reward. And Saha-gu is just one of the aids that couples can qualify for. TWSJ recalls that not all support comes from the administrations and that there are also companies or religious organizations that are trying to reverse the country’s demographic crisis. Two examples are the construction company Booyoung Group, which offered $75,000 to employees who have a child; and the Yoido Full Gospel Churchwhich grants its members almost $1,400. The big question. With such incentives the question is obvious. Why don’t South Koreans get married? Why does your birth rate continue? far below from years ago? Part of the answer is social and cultural changes. TWSJ cite a survey recent study that shows that three-fifths of employed South Koreans do not see the slightest problem in not going through the altar, a factor to which are added other economic factors, such as long working hoursthe increase of cost of living or how burdensome it is the upbringing of children in a society characterized by its level of demand and competitiveness. Another key is the difficulties that women encounter when re-entering the labor market after becoming mothers. In fact, there are dating programs that have ended up being suspended precisely because they could not bring together a sufficient number of interested women. Other young people rule out registering simply because of the heavy bureaucracy that accompanies this type of initiative. “It’s more problematic than you imagine,” recognize one to TWSJ. Is the Government a good matchmaker? That is the other big question, especially if you take into account that programs like Seoul or … Read more

South Korea has a plan to dominate in memory chips and robotics. One of a billion dollars

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South Korea has put on the table a megaproject for the AI ​​era. This is an initiative made up of three public-private projects spread across semiconductors, data centers and the promising industry of “physical AI”, that is, robots and autonomous systems. The advertisement seeks something very specific: that the country does not depend only on selling memory, but on manufacturing other physical products that it anticipates will be consumed massively. Memory chips rule. The largest item of this ambitious plan is, as we all expected, the one destined for the country’s semiconductor industry. Samsung and SK Hynix have committed to investing $585 billion in new manufacturing plants in the southeast of the country, in addition to strengthening factory construction in the Seoul region. They want to double the production of DRAM memories in five years. The future belongs to data centers. The second large part of this plan corresponds to the data centers that are precisely going to take advantage of a large part of those memory chips. SK Group, CS Group and Naver will invest $357 billion to build large-scale AI data centers in areas until now far from the country’s technology centers. According to the Ministry of Science, the final ambition is to achieve a combined capacity of 18.4 GW by 2035, which would make South Korea one of the world’s great AI “nodes.” Robotics, of course. More surprising is the third leg of the plan: the South Korean government has declared that “physical AI” is a “national strategic industry.” These systems, which allow robots or autonomous vehicles to interact with the real world, also want to be part of the future of the country’s technology industry. In three years they want to create a foundational AI model with the philosophy of “models of the world“—the same in which Yan LeCun or Fei-Fei Li work—. Hyundai has its own plan. The South Korean auto industry giant has set aside $5.8 billion to create a robot manufacturing plant and data center. It’s no coincidence: Hyundai is in fact the parent company of Boston Dynamics since 20221, and is already using its local supply chain to help the American company increase production of its Atlas humanoid robot. The goal: build 30,000 units per year in 2028. Humanoid robots in factories. South Korea wants to commercialize humanoid robots in several key industries before 2028, and to achieve this it wants to train the people who will work with them. The joint plan includes a section that talks about training 10,000 new “AI robotics specialists” in the next five years. But. The announcement coincides with an important internal debate: there are political proposals that seek distribute part of the extraordinary profits of the chip manufacturers, and the unions already see the imminent threat of robotics that will replace positions in all types of assembly chains. The opposition to the South Korean government has also criticized the location of these new production centers, which according to them respond more to a political calculation than to a good industrial strategy. In Xataka | Samsung had been the absolute king of technology in South Korea for decades: SK Hynix has just surpassed it

South Korea had a tech king since 2000. The AI ​​fever just crowned another

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When one talked about South Korean technology, the company that always came to mind was Samsung. The semiconductor giant and the mobile industry He seemed to be the undisputed leader of his countrybut that’s about to change. Sk Hynix is ​​the new darling of the South Korean technology industry, and it has achieved this driven by memory crisis. Surprise in sight. Since 2000, Samsung Electronics had maintained imperial dominance in the Asian country, and since then it has been the flagship of its economy. However, things have changedbecause its eternal rival, SK Hynix, has been one of the great beneficiaries of the memory crisis. Source: Reuters. Seen and unseen. Yesterday the company’s shares reached their all-time high, briefly surpassing in market capitalization to Samsung, a colossal milestone that makes clear the impact that AI has on the global economy. Memory chips were a good business before, but now they are the star technological product. In yesterday’s session, however, SK Hynix dropped 12.5% ​​in value, which made Samsung (which also fell significantly) regain that throne again in market capitalization…for now. Sk Hynix rises from the ashes. In 2002, the company (then called Hynix Semiconductor) was drowning in debt. It had executed an aggressive expansion plan that did not work well and was on the verge of being sold to Micron (the offer was announcedIn fact, although was rejected). Its shares, which went public in 1996 at a price of 20,000 won, fell to 135 won in 2003, which made it considered a company doomed to failure. After years of crossing the desert and suffering the cyclical crises in the RAM memory market, the rise of AI has transformed it into one of the most valuable chip manufacturers on the planet, competing head-to-head with Samsung or Micron. A goose that lays the golden eggs called HBM. The turning point came after a crucial strategic decision. In 2023 the semiconductor industry was in free fall in terms of prices, but at SK Hynix they decided not only to maintain, but to accelerate their investments in high bandwidth memory chips (High-Bandwidth Memory, or HBM). These memories are the most in demand in the field of GPUs aimed at data centers, and thanks to that commitment SK Hynix has taken 61% of the global HBM chip marketwell above the 17% that Samsung has. Of commoditynothing. The president of SK Group—parent of SK Hynix—, Chey Tae-won, indicated how historically memory had become a commodity. It made no difference to buy a module from SK Hynix, Samsung or Micron because they were almost clone and interchangeable chips. With HBM technology the story changed: it is a component so optimized and integrated with AI chips, that Nvidia’s dependence on these chips is enormous. Samsung defends its leadership. He surprise temporary has not gone down well with Samsung. Those responsible have indicated that market capitalization calculations should include preferred shares. If they are included, Samsung’s capitalization value would continue to be higher than that of SK Hynix. Samsung is currently the leader in this area, but the market trend seems to favor the theory that SK Hynix will end up being more valuable as long as this memory crisis continues. The threat to DRAM. The danger for Samsung not only comes from SK Hynix being the undisputed leader in HBM memories, but from the fact that it is also is growing noticeably in conventional DRAM memories. According to Bank of America estimates, SK Hynix will expand its wafer production by 38% between 2025 and 2028, while Samsung will only do it 17%. At SK Hynix they are putting everything on the table, and that is causing the (economic) gap between both companies, previously enormous, to practically no longer exist. In Xataka | The RAM memory trident already works on DDR6 technology. It will be for the hyperscalers, of course

South Korea has just entered the most exclusive club on the planet. And China and North Korea are not exactly calm

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In 2004, South Korea admitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency that years before it had rperformed secret experiments of uranium enrichment without officially declaring them. That caused a small diplomatic crisis and revived a question that has been chasing Seoul for decades: how far it is willing to go to not be left behind in Asia. Now he has taken an unprecedented step. The great leap. South Korea just gave one of the most important strategic steps in its recent military history: entering the small club of countries capable of operating nuclear powered submarines. Until now, this terrain was reserved for powers such as the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom or India. He Jangbogo-N project It completely changes Seoul’s position in Asia because it stops being only an advanced industrial and technological power and also becomes a naval actor with oceanic ambitions and a much more sophisticated deterrence capacity. The decision has an enormous symbolic component, but above all practical: A nuclear submarine can remain submerged for months, travel enormous distances and operate with a freedom impossible for traditional diesel models. For China and North Korea the message is clear. South Korea no longer wants to limit itself to protecting its coasts; It wants to have a permanent presence and response capacity throughout the regional board. Announcement of the project in the South Korean defense ministry Seoul’s great obsession. He official argument revolves around the North Korean threat and especially the growth of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea has been developing ballistic missiles launched from submarines and working on their own naval nuclear propulsion programs with possible Russian help. In this context, South Korea considers that its current diesel submarines are no longer sufficient to maintain a credible long-term deterrence capacity. The new nuclear models would allow the waters near the peninsula to be monitored for much longer and guarantee second attack ability much more difficult to neutralize. Even without nuclear weapons on board, the simple possibility that these platforms could disappear under the sea for long periods makes any enemy military calculation much more complex. China in the equation. Although North Korea is the immediate threat, the greater strategic background clearly points towards China. They remembered the TWZ analysts that Beijing has been expanding its submarine fleet and strengthening its naval presence for years throughout Asia-Pacificas South Korea watches the regional competition shift away from focusing solely on the Korean Peninsula. The construction of nuclear submarines reflects precisely this mental change in Seoul: the country is beginning to see itself as a regional maritime power with much broader interests. Hence China has publicly criticized the program and has insisted on the obligations non-proliferation. Beijing understands perfectly what it means this technological leap. A neighbor with its own nuclear submarines implies a presence that is more difficult to track, a much deeper surveillance capacity and a navy capable of operating far from its ports. The most delicate detail. Impossible to pass by, because South Korea insists that does not intend develop nuclear weapons and will use low-enriched uranium under supervision international and coordination with the United States and the IAEA. However, the movement remains extremely sensitive because historically almost all countries with nuclear submarines also ended up developing atomic arsenals. Therein lies a good part of the regional concern. Although Seoul maintains officially your commitment With non-proliferation, the project brings it technologically closer to capabilities that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. Furthermore, the international context has changed. Blind trust in the US military umbrella It’s not so solid anymore. As before, in South Korea the debate has been growing for years about whether the country needs a more autonomous deterrence capacity against Pyongyang and against an increasingly powerful China. A gigantic industrial bet. The program is also a statement of industrial power. South Korea wants to build the submarines within its own territory using its naval, nuclear and technological industries, something that fits perfectly with the country’s obsession with gain strategic autonomy. The government estimates that the project will last more than forty years between construction and operation, it will generate tens of thousands of jobs and strengthen key sectors such as modular reactors, advanced shipbuilding and military engineering. Market reactions have made the expected impact clear: the large South Korean naval companies they shot in the stock market after the announcement. Seoul understands that this project not only redefines its military strength; It may also establish the country as one of the few nations capable of designing and maintaining complex nuclear naval systems on its own. The silent race. The most important thing is that the movement of South Korea can further accelerate the submarine and nuclear race in Asia. Australia now advances with AUKUS To obtain nuclear submarines, North Korea seeks its own with Russian support and China continues to expand one of the largest submarine fleets on the planet. Now Seoul officially joins to that strategic underwater competition. If you also want, the region is entering a stage where the ability to disappear under the ocean for months has become one of the maximum symbols of military power. And South Korea just announced that is going to be part of that exclusive group, even if that means further altering the security balance in East Asia. Image | x In Xataka | Russia has built an imposing nuclear submarine with one mission: to launch one of the most extreme weapons ever devised In Xataka | North Korea has cleared up doubts about its alliance with Russia: it has just announced its first nuclear submarine

The greatest Japanese military taboo after the Second World War has just been blown up. China and North Korea are to blame

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In 1945, Japan emerged from World War II with a new Constitution that, in practice, prevented him have again offensive aircraft carrier. Eight decades later, one of its largest ships is once again preparing to operate fighter jets from the deck alongside the US Marines. Japan leaves its historical limits behind. Japan is entering a military phase that for decades avoided describing openly. He “Kaga”officially classified as a helicopter destroyer, will operate in June F-35B stealth fighters of the US Marine Corps in joint exercises that definitively bring the country closer to a light aircraft carrier capability. The gesture is much more important than it seems because it breaks a deeply rooted political and historical barrier since World War II: the idea that Japan should strictly limit its offensive capabilities. Tokyo continues to avoid the term “aircraft carrier,” but operational reality is beginning to look more and more like classic shipborne aviation. The Kaga and a return. The transformation of the “Kaga” and its twin “Izumo” It has been underway for years, but now it is entering the truly decisive phase: operate fighter aircraft fifth generation from deck in real conditions. The planned exercises with the US F-35B will include “cross-deck” maneuvers, where Marine aircraft take off and land from a Japanese ship. all this requires modifications depth in the deck, thermal resistance to withstand vertical landings and new coordinated procedures between pilots, sailors and technical personnel. Although Japan has placed the F-35Bs under the control of its Air Force and not the Navy, the practice brings the country enormously closer to having fully functional small aircraft carriers. A US Marine Corps F-35B lands aboard Kaga during training exercises in 2024 China and North Korea behind. The great driver of this transformation is the deterioration of the strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific. China multiply your pressure naval around Taiwan and the East China Sea as North Korea maintains a constant capacity of military destabilization. In this context, Tokyo needs to disperse its air capacity and reduce dependence on vulnerable ground bases. There the F-35B enters: a fighter capable of taking off over very short distances or landing vertically from relatively small decks. For Japan, this offers enormous flexibility in an archipelago full of islands and long sea distances. Each converted ship expands the number of platforms from which the country can project air power. USA as accelerator. The direct involvement of the US Marine Corps makes clear the extent to which Washington is acting as an accelerator of Japanese military transformation. The Marines already made the first historic landings on the “Izumo” in 2021 and since then they have accompanied practically all phases of the program. The “Kaga” even traveled to the United States for specific tests with F-35B and has already operated alongside British and American aircraft linked to the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales. More than simple maneuvers, these exercises serve to integrate allied doctrines, logistics and procedures in a possible regional crisis scenario. The Indo-Pacific is filling up. The change also reflects a broader trend: the proliferation light aircraft carrier and ships capable of operating F-35Bs throughout the US allied network. United Kingdom, Italy, South Korea and potentially Spain sfollow similar paths to maintain embarked aviation without the need for gigantic nuclear supercarriers. He F-35B It has thus become the centerpiece of a new generation of medium navies capable of projecting air power from relatively compact platforms. Japan fits that model perfectly, especially in a scenario where war in the Pacific could force aircraft, ammunition and fuel to be dispersed across multiple moving points. The real test begins now. Until now, much of the Japanese program had still been experimental or symbolic. The real test begins with regular operations, long deployments and the ability to sustain stealth fighters on deck for weeks. That is where it will be measured if the “Kaga” It definitively ceases to be a “helicopter destroyer” to become, in practice, a a light aircraft carrier fully operational. And there, too, the most profound change is perceived: Japan is gradually leaving behind the defensive military culture to adapt to an increasingly Indo-Pacific more militarizedcompetitive and unpredictable. Image | hunini In Xataka | Japan has just crossed a line unprecedented since World War II: China has responded with supersonic missiles In Xataka | Japan has made a historic decision in the face of US uncertainty: deploy missiles that reach North Korea and China

China is launching giant buoys into the sea that are real “small” fortified data centers. Korea won’t like it

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Ocean observation is an essential activity to monitor climate change, navigation and the security of the planet, however 95% of internet data travels therethe sighting of ghost ships is the order of the day and we continue found new islands. Until now, the quintessential element for monitoring the sea has been floating sensors that everyone knows: buoys, a legacy of the analog world. In that calm calm China has invaded with its Sea Dragon (Hailong) series, a new generation of enormous buoys that mark a before and after in scale, design and functionality. Of course, they have nothing to do with that mooring that has reigned in naval engineering since the Second World War. The new Chinese buoy. The Hailong series are literally small disk-shaped fortified data stations. Although small is relative: its diameter is around six meters in diameter and as a structure it looks more like a small unmanned oil platform than conventional buoys. After completing the relevant tests at sea, it has already been integrated into the Yellow Sea observation network to continuously and real-time monitor the entire water column, according to the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When deploying the new buoy, technicians simultaneously removed an older buoy after 16 years of service. A deliberate symbolic gesture insofar as it is not a mere change of buoy: according to the Institute it is “the world’s first system with a single disc side anchor structure”, leaving behind the classic central mooring point that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II. Why is it important. The problem with the design of classic buoys is mechanical and well known: when a buoy with a central mooring rotates due to currents and wind, the cables coil and generate structural and instrumentation failures. This new lateral disc anchorage solves the root problem because it uses another geometry, thus minimizing these errors, operating with more stability. That is, the importance lies in the continuity of the data. The second reason is strategic. The Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences I had already tried other synchronized observation systems capable of covering from 10 kilometers of atmosphere to 1 kilometer of depth underwater, withstanding winds of 60 m/s and waves of up to 20 meters, powered by various energy sources (wave, solar, wind, hybrid). This new buoy transfers these capabilities to especially sensitive waters. It is, in short, a buoy designed to be operational for the long term. Context. Since the 1940s, the world standard for buoys has been defined by US Navy designs, such as the NOMAD (Navy Oceanographic Meteorological Automatic Device) type. For the time, these devices complied thanks to their simplicity and ease of deployment, although due to their physics they are vulnerable to excessive swinging. If there is serious surf, precision measurements get dirty. Over the years this standard has met precisely because it complied, its maintenance is low and other alternatives present challenges to its deployment. But China, driven by its need to control the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, has chosen to redesign the platform from scratch. In fact, China and Korea have a fishing agreement in the Yellow Sea dating back to 2001 where permanent installations are expressly prohibited. So China has fulfilled it in its own way: since then it has deployed 13 buoys, two large aquaculture cages and a maintenance platform. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) qualify this strategy of “progressive sovereignty”. How they have done it. The development is led by the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has been testing real-time transmission mooring systems since 2016. The new buoy is, therefore, the result of a decade of development, not a technological leap that arrives overnight. The secret of its design is the topology: moving the anchor point from the geometric center of the disc to the side eliminates the twisting moment produced by the entanglement of cables in the classic design. Instead of a wave-riding hull, the body is designed with a narrow cross-section at the waterline and deep ballast, which noticeably reduces hydrodynamic forces. For energy management, photographs published by the South Korean navy last year show models with solar panels that, assisted by artificial intelligence for data management and instrument optimization. The result is a platform that shines for its autonomy and resilience, since it can operate continuously in adverse sea conditions without human intervention. Yes, but. From a technical and geopolitical point of view, this deployment has a double reading: China’s official description presents these buoys as tools for the study of climate change and tsunami warning, but inherently this infrastructure is dual: if it integrates sonar and can process data in real time, it can also function as a war and control tool. On the other hand, the deployment of these intelligent platforms in disputed waters has its drawback from the point of view of international maritime law since they are complex and almost permanent structures. In other words, it is like putting a pike there. In Xataka | The United States is launching giant spheres into the sea with one goal: to take advantage of one of the largest sources of renewable energy In Xataka | A buoy from Mallorca has revealed the meteorological problem that Spain faces: the Mediterranean Sea is on fire

There is a “nuclear” gift from Russia to North Korea off the coast of Spain

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In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Western experts began to fear that Russian scientists and military technology would end arriving in North Korea through opaque means, silently fueling Pyongyang’s weapons programs. Since then, every strange move between Moscow and the North Korean regime has been observed with a mixture of concern, secrecy and suspicions that are difficult to prove. A collapse full of unknowns. counted this morning CNN in an extensive report that the sinking of the Russian freighter Ursa Major off the Spanish coast has ended up becoming one of the strangest and most opaque stories to emerge around the Ukrainian war, as well as one of the most delicate. Officiallythe ship suffered several explosions in December 2024 before sinking in the Mediterranean. However, from the first moment they began to accumulate details difficult to fit into the version of a simple maritime accident: a cargo absurdly described as “manhole covers”, a Russian military escort for much of the journey, strange maneuvers before the sinking, subsequent explosions on the wreck and a very unusual silence from both Moscow and the Spanish authorities. Little by little, the case began to look less like a conventional shipwreck and more a strategic operation that went wrong in the middle of an extremely sensitive geopolitical context. The suspicion that changes everything. The great suspicion arose when Spanish researchers and sources cited by CNN They began to point out that the Ursa Major could transport nuclear reactor components similar to those used in Russian submarines. The captain himself would have ended up admitting to Spanish investigators that those supposed “manhole covers” were actually linked pieces to two naval reactors, although he claimed not to know if they contained nuclear fuel. The most disturbing hypothesis is that the final destination was not Vladivostok, despite officially appearing on the route, but the North Korean port of Rason. That is where the story takes on a completely different dimension, because the sinking would no longer be just a maritime incident, but the possible interruption of a technology transfer extremely sensitive between Moscow and Pyongyang, just after North Korea sent thousands of soldiers to support Russia in the Ukrainian war. The WC-135 off Spain. The arrival of the WC-135 aircraft Americans was the detail that definitively set off all the alarms. These planes, known as “nuke sniffers,” are not just any aircraft: they are extremely specialized platforms designed to detect radioactive traces and analyze nuclear contamination in the atmosphere. Washington normally uses them to monitor nuclear tests, atomic accidents or sensitive activity in places like the Russian Arctic or Iran, in any case, not to routinely fly over the Mediterranean off Spain. that the United States will send twice These devices over the area where the Ursa Major rests immediately fueled the suspicion that he feared something much more serious than a simple shipwreck. Although there is no public confirmation of radioactive contamination, the simple deployment of these planes left a sensation that is very difficult to ignore: Russia could have had a nuclear “gift” destined for North Korea sunk in front of Europe. Let us remember that a few months later, Kim Yong Un showed the world his alleged nuclear submarine. Explosions, spy ships and an uncomfortable wreck. The sequence after the sinking made the story even stranger. According to the research quoted by CNNthe ship did not seem doomed to sink immediately after the first explosions. However, hours after Spanish rescue resources arrived, the Russian ship Ivan Gren It launched red flares over the area and new explosions were recorded, detected even by Spanish seismic systems. Days later it also appeared the Yantarofficially a Russian research ship but designated for years by NATO as spy platform submarine. He remained on the wreck for several days before to register more explosions underwater. All of this continued to fuel the theory that Moscow may have attempted to destroy sensitive evidence at the bottom of the Mediterranean, especially if the ship was carrying advanced military nuclear technology or compromised documentation related to North Korea. The theory of silent sabotage. Another of the most surprising aspects of the investigation is the possibility that the Ursa Major was attacked with an extremely unusual weapon. The Spanish authorities are handling the hypothesis of a small hole just 50 centimeters caused by a supercavitating torpedo Barracuda typea weapon capable of moving at very high speed by reducing the friction of water using a gas bubble. The disturbing thing about this type of torpedoes is that they can pierce a hull without necessarily generating a large audible explosion, something that would fit with the account of the Russian captain, who stated not having heard no impact as the ship began to lose speed. Other experts believe the use of limpet mines or attached charges to the helmet. In any case, the mere fact that sophisticated sabotage is contemplated in waters near Spain reveals to what extent the case has stopped looking like a conventional accident. The reflection of a new alliance. Beyond the concrete mystery of the Ursa Majorthe case reflects something even more important: the rapid rapprochement between Russia and North Korea. For years, Moscow avoided crossing certain lines related to the transfer of strategic military technology to Pyongyang. However, the war in Ukraine has changed many priorities. As we have been countingNorth Korea contributes ammunition, missiles and soldiers, and Russia could be returning the favor with technical knowledge much more sensitive. The images released months later of the sinking with Kim Jong Un showing the helmet of a supposed North Korean nuclear submarine fit closely with this possibility. If there really was an attempt to move Russian naval reactors to North Korea, the sinking of the Ursa Major could represent one of the most important (and most secret) episodes of the new military relationship between both countries. Whatever it is is still in the Mediterranean. To this day, the wreck remains at about 2,500 meters deep … Read more

The complex of the wide face and the unusual solution that obsesses South Korea: elf ears

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Jung Da-yun was not satisfied with what the mirror returned to her. At 31 years old, this influencer South Korean woman felt she had an unusual defect: her ears were not big enough. According to a report from Wall Street JournalJung went to a clinic in Seoul, paid the equivalent of about $70 and underwent hyaluronic acid injections into his cartilage. The result was immediate: his ears leaned forward, rising above his face. Suddenly, his face looked slimmer, younger, and proportionate. “I was very happy with the results,” she confessed. This scene, which in the West could seem like the script of a satire, is a latent reality in East Asia. While in the United States or Europe, people with prominent ears go to the surgeon to hide them or glue them to their heads — a practice that in Korea is “creepy” in the eyes of some, as explained by the influencer Korean-American Krystal Lee—in Asia, the projection of the ears has become the Holy Grail of aesthetics. The magazine MEGA has baptized him such as “silent retouching”. “When I was in China, one of the dermatologists told me that this is one of the procedures he performs the most, and I couldn’t believe it,” dermatologist Jenny Liu tells the same medium. And the true art of this intervention lies in sculpting the face, hiding the trick in plain sight: behind the ear. Although they have coined it with the name “elf ears”, the goal is not to emulate the sharp and fantastic point of the elves of The Lord of the Rings. The clinical and informal term is closer to the concept of “fairy ear” (fairy ear), a procedure that seeks to alter the natural position of the pinna. According to Dr. Jung Gyu-sik in the studio Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery – Global Openthe technique consists of injecting between 1 and 2 milliliters of hyaluronic acid filler in the most lateral part of the helix and in the auriculocephalic sulcus. The goal is to increase the angle between the skull and the ear. It is fast, non-invasive, almost painless and its effects last between 6 and 12 months. Dr. Jung himself confesses in it Wall Street Journal having performed up to 20 of these injections in a single day. Where did this fever come from? The trend germinated in China about five years ago, where the hashtag “Aesthetic elf ear surgery” today exceeds 780 million views on the social network Weibo. However, the definitive outbreak occurred in South Korea when Mimi, a well-known singer of the K-pop group oh my girlconfessed to using special adhesive tape to simulate this effect. Overnight, searches for “ear filler” exploded 1,200% on BarbieTalka popular South Korean aesthetics platform. Those who don’t want needles turn to these adhesive tapes that cost just $3. The terror of “pancake face” To understand this fashion you have to look away from the ear and focus on the cheek. South Korean researcher and academic Leem So-yeon sums it up perfectly in Wall Street Journal: “It would be reductionist to frame it simply as an obsession with ears. Ultimately, it’s a procedure to make the face appear smaller. The ears are just the middle.” This is an optical illusion trick based on negative space. Dermatologist Danny Guo details in the magazine MEGA Asian patients often have naturally prominent cheekbones (zygomas). Since they do not want to increase the volume of their cheeks, injecting behind the ear creates a “lateral structure” that visually slims the contour of the face. All this is born from a deep cultural complex. In East Asia, wide faces and large heads are heavily penalized. While in China they make fun of what they call “tortia faces”, in South Korea a sharp “V” shaped jaw is idolized, details the WSJ. But it is not a mere narcissistic whim; It is a tool for work and social survival. As John P. DiMoia explainsa professor at Seoul National University, young people do not operate out of ego: “It’s about looking my best for my job interviews.” This pressure It is better understood under logic that, in South Korea, “presenting the best version of oneself is a sign of respect for others.” The “Bai Fu Mei” canon Science supports that although there are universal beauty traits such as facial symmetry, the perception of attractiveness varies dramatically by ethnicity. A study of the medical journal Clinics in Dermatology points out that traditional Asian beauty prefers wider faces but with lower vertical height, an inverted triangle shape and a reduced projection of eyebrows and chins. Hence the obsession with fine-tuning the structure at any cost. But the sociological background is even darker. As we detail in XatakaSouth Korea’s strict standards are a form of “cultural racism.” It is a system that excludes different bodies and skin tones under the protection of neo-Confucian traditions, where whiteness and delicacy symbolized social status (the Chinese concept bai fu mei: white, rich, beautiful). By going global through K-pop and K-dramas, the Korean aesthetic or K-Beauty industry has attempted to impose an exclusive standard on the rest of the world. In fact, Korean brands They had to apologize publicly or drastically expand their makeup palettes (such as the TIRTIR brand, which increased sales by 55,000% by offering 40 shades after complaints from black content creators) because, simply, the most innovative industry in the world did not make products for dark-skinned people. “Elf ears” are not born in a vacuum. They are the symptom of a hypertrophied body modification industry. Seoul hosts the “Belt of Beauty”a neighborhood smaller than Central Park but with more clinics than Los Angeles, Miami and Rio de Janeiro combined. As much of the Korean population has already widened their eyes, raised the bridge of their noses and sharpened their jaws, the industry desperately needs to invent new areas of growth. And foreigners are answering the call. According to data from the Ministry of Health cited by the specialized platform Seoulzin … Read more

In 1953, North Korea and South Korea spoke the same language. In 2026, they begin to be two different

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The abrupt political changes, the traumatic measures imposed by force of military mandate on a people, can have unexpected effects visible in the short term and leave wounds that do not heal until long after the end of the discord. We saw it very clearly in the two “Germanies” that the Cold War left us and we see it clearly today in another country: Korea. Traveling to the present, and although we know the mark that the battle between the capitalist and communist blocs is leaving on the Korean population, there is a dimension of cultural inequality that may have gone more unnoticed: idiomatic. As a recent study showed, and after just over seven decades of separation, Korean is no longer the same between the north and the south. 45% of the population surveyed He had problems understanding the dialogues of Koreans from the opposite area, and in 1% of the cases the North Koreans did not understand at all what the South Koreans were telling them. In conclusion, and as linguists dedicated to this company have stated, at least a third of everyday vocabulary is no longer the same, especially that referring to professional and business topics. This is how their vocabularies have varied The main difference between both territories is that in North Korea the language has remained purer, with slight grammatical incursions from Chinese and Russian, while South Korean has embraced many neologisms from English without hesitation. While over time in South Korea companies have created various terms to say “paper”adapting to new and different formats and materials, in the north the original term is maintained exclusively, which they must use for all variants. In the south, and to speak of football terminology, penalty goals are scored with a “penalty kick”expressed literally in English, while in the north the Koreans triumph by making an “11 meter punishment.” Southerners, when they want to have a juice, ask for a “juice”, while northerners talk about “sweet fruit water”. to wish you “good luck” to someone, those from the south have adopted an English-speaking expression in colloquial speech, “hi-team”something that those from the north do not understand at all. North Koreans “have a headache,” while those in the south, who in recent decades have discovered the concept of stress, talk much more about the pain of “suturese”stress in the corrupt slang konglish. The new lexicons also show the ideological transformation between the two nations, between their political systems and their social structures. Since the separation, the word “dongmu”which meant friend, fell out of use in the north in favor of the Soviet term товарищ, “comrade.” “Sun-mul”, a term that means “the action of introducing your friend”, is now prohibited from being used among the general population, and its privileged use was reserved for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong il. The problematic oral life of deserters These changes have already had recognizable consequences and it is logical that it becomes a more pressing problem every day. During the 2018 Olympic Games, for example, the two countries decided to launch a reconciliation message to the world by allowing its women’s hockey teams to compete in the same group head to head. As the athletes from the south commented later, there was quite a few communication problems that harmed their final strategy: apparently, the coach, from South Korea, used technical words in English, something that is most common in sports disciplines anywhere in the world, but the players from the north were not able to follow her lessons because of this vocabulary that, for them, was indecipherable. Something more serious than the lack of coordination for a sporting event is what many of them have had to experience. the 28,000 deserters who traveled from north to south in recent years. Their language unintentionally betrays them in their new country of residence. In the best of cases the locals They laugh at their outdated dialect. That they do not know how to adapt to the jargon of a post-war and globalized reality. At worst, they can have many problems getting into schools or getting jobs and live a second life as sacrificed as the one they tried to leave behind. Language preservation: a national trauma Because, in addition, Korean has great emotional and identity relevance for the 75 million citizens that both fronts have together. After the dramatic occupation of the peninsula by Japanese forces between 1910 and 1945, the locals were subjected to Japanese linguistic norms as a strategy to control the population and eradicate their culture. They imposed themselves “scientific” speeches that they defended their language was little more than a dialect descended from Japanese (a controversial claim for any linguist with a neutral vision), and that therefore it was not worth preserving a perverted use of a language superior in its purity. T After the Pacific War, teaching in Korean was strictly prohibited, its vocabulary was extinguished, people who spoke it daily were reprimanded, and intellectuals who tried to preserve its legacy were executed. With the end of the Second World War, the two resulting nations partly had to re-empower their language. There are attempts to reunify the language Both governments have been working bidirectionally for several years on a unified glossary project. It is known as the Gyeoremal-kunsajeon, or the Dictionary for People’s Understanding of Korean, and is the plan under which future generations will be educated. These 70 years of linguistic change They have gone much further than the transformation of some terms. There is even conversational structures that have been modified. It would be a change as abrupt as uniting people of a language with those who use one of its dialects. It is not just the fact that neither of the two States want to give in, it is that any modification of the linguistic structures that are not careful could cement syntactic inconsistencies or phonetics in the future. The company’s objectives, furthermore, are achieved at irregular rates, since relations between both nations have cooled … Read more

While everyone was looking at the Middle East, North Korea has had time to do what Iran has not been able to: go nuclear.

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It happened a few years ago, when in the midst of increasing tensions with North Korea, the Japanese government came to send alerts to millions of mobile phones through the J-Alert system when it detected the overflight of a missile, causing unusual scenes in which trains stopped and citizens took refuge in stations without knowing exactly what was happening. That reaction, almost automatic and difficult to imagine in peacetime, left a clear image of the extent to which certain global balances can be strained without warning. The regime that did not fall. I told a few days ago in an extensive special report the wall street journal the story of the surprising source of North Korea’s enduring power, a nation that has survived the demise of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China because it ceased to be just a communist state and became something more resilient: a closed ideological structurehereditary and almost religious. There it is impossible not to start with the Kim dynasty that managed to consolidate a system in which power is not only exercised, but also believed, internalized and transmitted as a faith. That model, built from Kim Il Sung and perfected by his successors, has made it possible to maintain extraordinary internal cohesion even in conditions of extreme isolation. While other regimes eroded as they opened up to the world or collapsed under external pressure, Pyongyang consolidated a base of control much deeperdifficult to dismantle from the outside. From ideology to state religion. I remembered the Journal that the core of that system is not only political, but also symbolic and emotional, with elements that clearly recall an organized religion. The Juche ideology It progressively replaced classical Marxism, incorporating rituals, symbols and an almost messianic narrative around the leader. The omnipresence of Kim Il Sung, his conversion in “eternal president” and dynastic continuity have generated a structure of loyalty that goes beyond political obedience. This model, influenced indirectly through Christianity that once dominated Pyongyang, allowed the construction of a system where loyalty to the leader is perceived as an absolute truth, something that largely explains its stability and capacity for resistance. The silent military leap. On that internal basis, North Korea has developed a pretty clear strategy: to arm oneself militarily until one becomes practically untouchablealthough no one knows exactly how much of it is true. Today it is recognized that it has intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reach US territory and has reinforced its arsenal with increasingly sophisticated systems. Not only that. The recent tests, just a few days ago from their new destroyer, with high-precision cruise and anti-ship missiles, they clearly show that it is no longer just a matter of accumulating weapons, but of integrating them into a modern military architecture, with rapid response capacity and systems resistant to interference. In fact, accelerated construction of new warships It aims at a transition from isolated platforms towards a structured naval force, which expands its projection capacity and complicates any containment scenario. Nuclear expansion in full noise. I told it this week Guardian through internal analyzes held by the UN nuclear watchdog. While much of the international attention was focused on the conflicts in the Middle EastNorth Korea has been taking advantage of this context to advance its nuclear program without restraint. As? Activity at key facilities such as Yongbyon has intensifiedwith new reactors, reprocessing plants and possible undeclared facilities to enrich uranium. The agency’s estimates point to dozens of warheads already operational and a growing capacity to produce enough material to between ten and twenty weapons additional each year. In other words, this rhythm, sustained over time, indicates that the objective is not only basic deterrence, but rather reaching a volume that guarantees the survival of the regime in the face of any attempt at forced change. The power that Iran has not consolidated. The key difference here is that North Korea has achieved what other countries in similar situations have achieved (call it Iran) have not been able to: convert their nuclear program into a fully integrated tool in their survival strategy. While other powers under international pressure have seen limited or braked its development, Pyongyang has moved closer to a point of no returnone where its capacity is broad enough to deter any intervention. In this context, it is possible that the real change is no longer just quantitative, but strategic: because when it reaches a surplus of nuclear capacity, the risk will cease to be solely regional and will have global implications, opening the door, at the very least, to new proliferation dynamics. Image | DPRK In Xataka | The US has activated plan B before Iran knocks down its last radar: disarm South Korea against the North’s new nuclear “toy” In Xataka | If the question is what has North Korea achieved in the last four years, the answer is simple: an unimaginable arsenal

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