Korea JoongAng Daily

Personal information belonging to about five thousand union members at Kia's Gwangmyeong plant was exposed after hackers breached a server operated by online training provider Mullingsoft.

According to Korea JoongAng Daily, the September nineteenth attack exposed names, employee ID numbers, encrypted phone numbers, and other personal information, and reportedly affected more than twenty organizations using Mullingsoft's systems.

Those organizations included South Korea's Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission and Ministry of National Defense.

And finally to Illinois, where the University of Illinois Chicago said a ransomware attack disrupted access to some College of Medicine systems and resulted in the theft of data stored on the college's servers.

The Model Y finished as the single best-selling vehicle in the country during that period.

Korea JoongAng Daily carried the sales data.

President Trump's September twenty-nine executive order directed federal agencies to replace the term artificial intelligence with super intelligence in official documents.

Elon Musk said on October four that he would rename SpaceX AI to SpaceX SI.

Seoul's ambassadors are often gastronomes keen to share a taste of their home cuisine.

In this series, The Korea JoongAng Daily asks the diplomatic corps to introduce our readers to their favorite restaurants representing cuisine from their homelands, while chatting about issues of interest to our Korean and global audience.

Ed.

Danish Ambassador to Korea, Michael Hemniti Winther, follows a personal rule for nearly every diplomatic posting: Write a song about the host country and, if possible, shoot a music video to go with it.

The hobby dates back at least to a 2001 posting in Vietnam, where he fronted a band with a fellow diplomat and played Western music at venues across Hanoi.

"I realized slowly that you can put the two things, diplomacy and music, together, and sometimes use one trade to reinforce the other," Winther said during an interview with The Korea JoongAng Daily on September 16.

Now more than a year into his term in Seoul, Winther has wrapped up recording his newest track with a Korean producer.

Its working title is "Alleys of Seoul." To most Koreans, Denmark conjures Legos, bicycles and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, but also one of the world's happiest countries, with a welfare model that they want to study.

Together, the discussions reveal how Seoul is pursuing greater operational and technological autonomy while maintaining its alliance with Washington, combining stronger national defense capabilities with continued efforts to reopen diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula.

For further information, see Office of the President of the Republic of Korea, Korea JoongAng Daily, and SBS News.

Vietnam's stronger growth outlook brings new financial risks.

The Asian Development Bank has raised Vietnam's 2026 growth forecast to seven point eight percent after the economy expanded eight point one eight percent during the first half of the year.

For Central Asian states, the opportunity is not simply to export minerals, but to attract investment in processing, manufacturing, and higher-value industries.

For further information, see Office of the President of the Republic of Korea, Yonhap News Agency, and Korea Joongang Daily.

Vietnam faces looming power gap as LNG projects lag.

Vietnam could face a power capacity shortfall approaching 14 gigawatts by 2030, as electricity demand rises faster than planned generation projects are being delivered.

Um, there's a lot of people out there that pressure rescues into rescuing dogs, but then there's not a lot of people out there that are signing up to take those dogs home.

Um, so I believe this article I read from the Korea JoongAng Daily said it costs 1 million won a year to take care of one of these dogs.

I think that's a bit of a low number.

Um, but let's say that, you know, 5 million won for five dogs per year, if I keep them five years, like some of the dogs I currently have in my rescue, that's a big financial commitment for a small rescue like us.

Park Hyun-do, a professor at the Sogang Euro-Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Institute, said that Iran would almost certainly strike back militarily even against non-combat assets.

Whether it's a patrol aircraft or anything else, I think there's a high chance Iran will hit it militarily," he told the Korea Joongang Daily, adding that in the worst case, they could go after Korean firms operating or anything connected to us in the region.

Park argued the risk is worse than in 2021, when Iran seized the Korean-flagged tanker Hankook Chemi, because Korea would be acting alone this time, rather than as part of a coalition.

He even suggested that Iran has an incentive to make an example of Korea before other countries follow suit.