South Korea

Intelligence for Better Decision Making

South Korea’s Fourth Nuri Rocket Launch Marks Shift Toward Commercial Space Operations

Nov. 28, 2025 | Technology & Innovation

South Korea conducted the fourth launch of its domestically developed Nuri rocket, advancing its launch technology, industrial partnerships, and infrastructure capacity.

**The Nuri (KSLV-II) lifted off from the Naro Space Center in Goheung at 1:13 a.m. on November 27, 2025, after teams addressed an abnormal signal from an umbilical retrieval pressure sensor, which had delayed the countdown by 18 minutes.**
This first nighttime launch and fourth overall mission lasted 18 minutes and 25 seconds. The first stage separated at about two minutes, the second stage at four minutes and 30 seconds, and the vehicle achieved a sun-synchronous orbit at roughly 600 km before deploying its payload.

**Standing 47.2 meters tall and weighing 200 tons at liftoff, the rocket carried nearly 960 kg of payload.**
The primary payload, Next-Generation Medium-Sized Satellite No 3 (CAS500-3), weighed approximately 500 kg and carries ROKITS instruments for aurora and airglow observation, IAMMAP sensors for ionospheric plasma and magnetic field measurement, and a Bio Cabinet for microgravity cell-printing experiments. Twelve CubeSats developed by universities, research institutes, and startups will conduct missions spanning space debris disposal, 6G communication tests, bio-production, Earth observation, and semiconductor component verification.

**Under a technology transfer agreement with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), Hanwha Aerospace served as system integrator for the first time, overseeing end-to-end vehicle production, assembly, and supply-chain management.**
Hanwha has produced 46 liquid engines to date—four 75-ton engines for the first stage, one 75-ton engine for the second stage, and a 7-ton engine for the third—slashing production time from six months to three through proprietary manufacturing adjustments. The company will also conduct launch operations for the fifth and sixth Nuri missions, slated for 2026 and 2027.

**Ground stations tracked engine burns, fairing separation, and payload deployment via telemetry.**
CAS500-3 made its first contact with the King Sejong Antarctic Station shortly after separation, and the CubeSats established sequential links with stations in Daejeon, Palau, Norway, and Antarctica. The Space and Aviation Agency and KARI will analyze mission data to verify precise orbit insertion and satellite performance against established success criteria.

**Naro Space Center’s No 2 launch pad system, designed, manufactured, and managed by HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, provided all mechanical and propellant ground support equipment and launch control facilities.**
The pad covers 6,000 m2 across three basement levels, has supported all four Nuri missions, and represents South Korea’s fully domestic launch infrastructure.

**This fourth mission reflects South Korea’s shift from a government-led space program toward a private sector–driven model.**
The upcoming fifth and sixth launches will validate repeatable production and scalable operations, after which Hanwha Aerospace will assume full commercial launch responsibility. From the seventh mission in 2028 onward, Nuri is expected to fly at least once a year and introduce payload fee structures for private sector customers beyond the sixth state-focused flights.

**Amid global launch capacity constraints caused by delays and restrictions at Japanese, European, and Russian providers, South Korea aims to position Nuri as a competitive medium-class launch vehicle.**
With over 300 domestic suppliers, a complete in-country launch infrastructure, and a roadmap to commercial operations, the program seeks to secure a foothold in the expanding global satellite launch market.

Omnimodal AI Agent Race Accelerates as Naver and Kakao Advance Multimodal Platforms

Nov. 27, 2025 | Technology & Innovation

Recent advancements in AI agent platforms focus on integrating text, images, voice, intonation, and emotional cues into a single model to enable more natural, contextually aware interactions.

**Naver and Kakao are each building “omnimodal” AI models that learn from multiple data types within one architecture.**
These models will serve as the backbone of their next-generation AI agent services, scheduled to launch next year, and allow users to engage across modalities without switching among siloed systems.

**Kakao’s current multimodal engine, KANANA-o, merges vision and audio processing and already operates within KakaoTalk to analyze short-form content.**
It detects user emotions and intonation to support more natural conversational exchanges. Kakao applies reinforcement learning continuously to sharpen KANANA-o’s communication skills and optimizes the model for deployment across its broader service portfolio.

**The company plans to evolve KANANA-o into a full omnimodal platform by 2026.**
Meanwhile, it will introduce a successor—KANANA2—later this year. KANANA2 will feature advanced architectures such as Mixture of Experts and Multi-Head Latent Attention, and Kakao is considering an open-source release to encourage community-driven enhancements and wider adoption.

**Naver is advancing toward omnimodality with its forthcoming HyperCLOVA X foundation model, expected in January 2026, alongside the integrated Agent N platform, which will unify text, image, and voice inputs under one interface.**
In July, Naver set a precedent by open-sourcing the HyperCLOVA X Seed 14B Think model, signaling its strategy of sharing foundational technology with the broader ecosystem.

**By embedding vision, audio, text, and affective cues in a single framework, both companies aim to deliver AI agents that adapt seamlessly to human communication nuances and enhance user experience across diverse input forms.**

Monitored Intelligence for South Korea - Nov. 28, 2025

News
Media
301

Government
Releases
31

City/State
Releases
28

Embassy
Releases
0

Foreign
Service
Advisories
0

Academic/
Think
Tank
1

Podcasts
0

Videos
0

Social
Media
0

Business
Releases
2

Erudite Risk takes an all risks approach to intelligence reporting. We categorize key intelligence into one of 40 different risk intelligence categories.

The goal is to provide intelligence that allows decision makers to avoid being blindsided by what they may have missed, while informing them to make better decisions as well.

Risk Categories Reported on Today

Risk Category

Items Reported On

Regulation

Accidents

Extreme Weather Events

Political Scandal or Corruption

Shifting Geopolitical Alliances

Epidemics and Pandemics

IP Protection

Geopolitical Conflict and Disputes

North Korea

Crime

Supply Chain Issues

Privacy

Protest, Demonstration, Dissent

Corporate Corruption or Fraud

Pollution

Erudite Risk also includes operations categories so you can monitor the environment for better decision making. Everything is tied together--what happens in risk affects operations and what happens in the market impacts risk profiles.

We categorize key intelligence into one of 30 different operations intelligence categories.

Different roles and functions within the organization can monitor different key issue areas. HR may monitor employment, wages, regulations, labor and management relations, etc., while P&L leaders may monitor overall developing trends.

Operations Categories Reported on Today

Operations Category

Items Reported On

Investor Sentiment

Initiative

Taxes

Bizdev-Partnering

Tech Development/Adoption

Asset Price Change

Financial System Problems

Mergers & Acquisitions

Real Estate

Economic Growth

Demographics

Trade Issues and Numbers

Employment

Operating Results

Legal Exposure

Inflation

Gov't plans to establish test cities, revise laws and more to bolster self-driving vehicle industry

Joongang Ilbo | English | News | Nov. 28, 2025 | Regulation

South Korea plans to establish large-scale autonomous driving test-bed cities to advance its autonomous vehicle technology from Level 3 (conditional automation) to Level 4 (high automation). The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced a government initiative to create a citywide autonomous driving test zone by 2026, deploying around 100 autonomous vehicles in the area. Currently, autonomous vehicles operate only in limited pilot zones across 47 areas rather than full urban environments.

The government aims to overhaul existing regulations including allowing the use of raw video footage for R&D, which is expected to improve recognition accuracy by up to 25 percent. Presently, laws require video footage to be pseudonymized, hindering data utility. Additionally, a new legal role called the autonomous vehicle safety manager will be introduced to clearly define criminal and administrative liabilities for Level 4 driverless vehicles, covering incidents such as signal breaches and hit-and-runs.

South Korea faces strong competition from the United States and China, where more extensive real-world testing and capital investments have accelerated industry advancement. In the global autonomous driving sector, 14 of the top 20 companies are based in the US, four in China, and only one each in Britain and Korea. To address potential conflicts with existing taxi operators, a tripartite consultation body will be formed involving the government, autonomous driving firms, and taxi representatives. The government aims to commercialize Level 4 autonomous vehicles by 2027.

Trade minister meets European business leaders to promote investment in S. Korea

Yonhap | English | News | Nov. 28, 2025 | UndeterminedBizdev-Partnering

Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo met with European business leaders in South Korea on November 27, 2025, to discuss measures for creating a stable investment environment. Attendees included representatives from Mercedes-Benz, Merck Korea, L'Oreal Korea, and the European Chamber of Commerce in Korea.

European companies raised concerns related to regulatory improvements, customs procedure simplifications, and the recognition of European standards as essential for boosting their investments. Yeo emphasized the South Korean government's commitment to reviewing relevant systems and regulations through the implementation of the Korea-EU free trade agreement to enhance market access for EU companies.

중국, 딥시크·알리바바 앞세워 'AI 오픈소스' 미국 추월

China Overtakes US in AI Open Source Led by DeepSeek and Alibaba

ET News | Local Language | News | Nov. 28, 2025 | UndeterminedTech Development/Adoption

China, led by DeepSeek and Alibaba, has surpassed the United States in the global AI open-source market for the first time. A recent study by MIT and Hugging Face indicated that Chinese AI open-source models account for 17% of new downloads over the past year, overtaking the combined 15.8% share of U.S. developers including Google, Meta, and OpenAI. This shift is seen as giving Chinese AI open source an advantage in global adoption, as open source lowers barriers for developers by allowing free downloads and modifications.

The United States' approach, shaped by the Trump administration’s push to promote open-source models reflecting “American values,” contrasts with China’s strategy. U.S. tech giants focus on developing proprietary frontier models to maintain control and revenue via subscriptions and corporate deals. While Meta initially opened models like "Llama," it has since increased efforts toward closed models for superintelligence development. Conversely, Chinese firms, encouraged by government policies and restrictions on exporting cutting-edge AI semiconductors, have accelerated open-source model development and domestic collaboration, fostering a more vibrant open-source ecosystem.

Chinese companies such as DeepSeek and Alibaba release models more frequently, often weekly or biweekly, providing a variety of options compared to the less frequent releases of U.S. firms. Techniques like model distillation, encouraged by U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors, have led Chinese researchers to develop small but powerful models. Additionally, Chinese firms are actively progressing in AI video-generation models. Experts highlight that China has more active participants in open-source AI development than the U.S., prompting concern among U.S. analysts about China's rapid advancements in this field.

Try the Daily Briefing

Try the Daily Briefing for your country of choice for two weeks--free of charge and with no obligation.

Have a service or subscription question? We'd be happy to hear from you.

How can we help?

Full Name:

Email Address:

Type of Inquiry:

Country of Interest:

Contact us for a free trial of the Daily Briefing for your country of choice.

We currently cover:

South Korea
Japan
China
Taiwan
Vietnam
India

info@eruditerisk.com

The Daily Briefing is delivered Monday through Thursday via email.

Each day's reports include a combination of:

Takes
Takes are our deep dives into a topic of enduring interest or concern. Takes include copious references to all the media resources we gathered to build them.

Developments
Developments are key issues and incidents being heavily reported on in country. These are the centers of local thought gravity around which everything else revolves.

Risk Media
Summaries and analysis of the most important risk issues reported on in media, arranged by risk category. Learn about risk trends and issues while they are developing--before they blow up.

Ops Media
Summaries and analysis of the most important operational issues reported on in media, arranged by operations category. See what's changing in your market, and what's not.

Government Releases
Government press and data releases on key economic data, regulation, law, intiatives, incidents. Straight from the government's press to your eyes in less than a day.

Embassy and Business Association Releases
Statements and news releases from foreign embassies and business/industry associations, including chambers of commerce.

The Daily Briefing is comprehensive!

The Daily Briefing can run 50-100 pages each day!

Luckily, Erudite Risk tailors every report specifically to you.

Content Filtering
We try hard to ensure that every piece of information included in each day's reports will be of interest to our readers.

To fulfill our goal of comprehensively monitoring the intelligence landscape and also keeping reports readable, we build big reports--then deliver only the information that applies to you.

Each Daily Briefing is a bespoke report matched to your concerns. Tell us what you want in it, or we can match it to your professional needs. It's that easy.