SuperGardenKorea : Understanding Korea. Growing with Korea.

Not a day goes by lately without unsettling news. This summer especially seems to bring more bad news than usual. Record-breaking heatwaves and wildfires across Europe, unpredictable downpours, one extreme weather headline after another. Climate change isn't a distant, future problem anymore. It's a problem we're living through today. So a question comes to mind: facing this shared global challenge, when did Korea start showing up? Korea's environmental push officially began in 2008, when the government made "Low Carbon, Green Growth" a national strategy. From there, it passed related legislation in 2010, introduced an emissions trading scheme in 2015 to bring carbon reduction into a formal system, and in 2020 declared it would reach carbon neutrality by 2050 — laying out a much clearer direction for the transition. Of course, by global standards, Korea wasn't an early mover. Europe and other frontrunners had already put climate change on the national ...

I've only ever known war through books and television. The sound of shells falling. Footsteps running for a bunker. What it feels like to lose your home overnight. I can't claim to understand any of it. Right now, in Ukraine, in the Middle East, real people are living through that cruelty. In the face of their grief and loss, I'm just someone watching the news from a safe distance. Still, a thought keeps returning to me lately. As someone living on one side of the world's oldest surviving Cold War-era military line, the words "defense" and "arms industry" feel heavier than they used to. So I want to write this one carefully. Korean defense companies have been posting record-breaking numbers lately, and the headlines keep coming. But behind those numbers is a simple fact: somewhere, these weapons are actually being used. And a weapon being used, anywhere, means someone's life has gone wrong. This isn't a piece meant to boast, standing on someo...

July 2026, Ankara, Türkiye. The President of Korea took the stage at NATO's defense industry forum. He said this: "Let's move beyond simply trading weapons systems, toward a partnership where we research together, produce together, and operate together." NATO's Secretary General called Korea's defense industrial base "fantastic." After that speech ended, I couldn't shake one thought. A little over seventy years ago, this country barely had a gun to its name. 1950: We Had Nothing Before dawn on June 25, 1950, North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel. The Korean military had the will to fight, but not the weapons to fight with. Mostly surplus M1 rifles supplied by the US military after World War II — no tanks worth the name, barely any artillery, and next to no anti-tank weapons or ammunition reserves. North Korea pushed south behind Soviet T-34 tanks. In the opening days of the war, Korea's forces collapsed with almost nothing to stop the...

My younger brother lives in Ulsan. Ulsan was once the city with the highest average income in all of Korea. That was when shipbuilding, automobiles, and petrochemicals were all running at full speed at the same time. Then shipbuilding began to crack, and the mood shifted. Foreclosure listings flooded the market, and the streets grew quiet. These days, my sibling says things seem to be slowly coming back. The worst is probably over. But it's still hard to say the local economy has truly recovered. The news talks about Korea's shipbuilding revival. But the temperature on the ground rises more slowly than the headlines suggest. So how did the crisis begin — and how did the industry get to where it is today? The End of the Boom: Korea's Shipbuilding Collapse (2008–2016) In the early 2000s, Korea was the world's number one shipbuilder. A significant share of the world's vessels were being built in shipyards in Geoje, Ulsan, and Mokpo. Order backlogs were overflowing, and...

Originally published: July 6, 2026 | Updated: July 7, 2026 Today, July 6th. The global defense industry is holding its breath. Canada is expected to announce the preferred bidder for CPSP — its next-generation submarine program worth up to $44 billion USD in construction costs alone — today. Hanwha Ocean of Korea and Germany's TKMS have been locked in a head-to-head competition for nearly a year, and the verdict was widely expected before Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney departs for the NATO Summit in Ankara on July 7th, according to Canadian broadcaster CTV. By the time you read this, the result may already be out. Whatever it turns out to be, the fact that Canada deliberated this carefully, this long, says something in itself. It means the two contenders were evenly matched — and that this decision carried real weight for Canada, too. What makes this even more striking is that Canada isn't the only front. Across the Pacific, the United States has been sending its own ...

In the previous episode , we explored why the world depends on Korea's memory semiconductors in the age of AI. That naturally led to another question. How did these two companies become the world's memory giants? There's no way to fit all of their "blood, sweat, and tears" into a single article, but I did my best to trace the most fascinating chapters of their journey. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Their paths could not have been more different. Yet both companies faced moments when everything seemed lost—and both eventually rose to the very top of the global semiconductor industry. Samsung Electronics: The Tokyo Declaration That Changed Everything In March 1982, Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul traveled to the United States to receive an honorary doctorate from Boston University. Afterward, he visited Silicon Valley, touring semiconductor facilities operated by IBM and Hewlett-Packard. At the time, there were barely 1,000 personal computers in all of ...

In the last episode , we looked at how semiconductors fall into two broad types. Chips that calculate, and chips that remember. In the AI era, both matter. No matter how powerful a chip's calculating ability is, performance breaks down if data doesn't arrive fast enough. That's why one type of memory chip keeps coming up in every AI conversation lately. HBM — High Bandwidth Memory. AI Needed a Wider Road GPUs calculate at incredible speed. But speed alone isn't enough. If data isn't delivered fast enough, the GPU simply sits there, waiting. Regular memory is like a single-lane road. Cars can pass, but the moment traffic increases, everything backs up. HBM is more like a multi-lane highway. Multiple streams of data move at once, constantly feeding the GPU. As AI models keep growing, this gap matters more and more. AI no longer needs a road for one or two cars. It needs a road built for hundreds of cars moving at the same time. But It's Extremely Ha...

In the previous episode, we explored why South Korea has made AI a national strategy. But whenever people talk about AI, one word keeps appearing. Semiconductors. They show up in AI news, in discussions about the global economy, and even dominate conversations in the stock market. So what exactly is a semiconductor? And why do you need to understand semiconductors before you can truly understand AI? AI Can't Exist on Its Own Many people think of AI as software. After all, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude all appear as applications on a screen. But AI cannot operate by itself. No matter how advanced an AI model is, it cannot generate a single answer without semiconductors performing the actual calculations. Just as the human brain depends on billions of neurons to think, AI depends on semiconductors to process information. Without them, AI simply cannot function. Not All Semiconductors Are the Same Here's something many people don't realize. A semiconductor is not ...

Recently, the Korean government unveiled its vision of becoming one of the world's top three AI nations. At first, it sounded like just another government initiative. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized it was something much bigger. It wasn't simply an AI policy. It was a strategy for Korea's future. So why did Korea decide to make AI a national priority? AI Isn't Creating a New Industry. It's Transforming Existing Ones. Korea has never been a country rich in natural resources. Instead, it built its economy through technology and manufacturing. Today, industries such as automobiles, semiconductors, batteries, and shipbuilding remain the backbone of the Korean economy. But AI is beginning to change how those industries compete. Cars are no longer judged only by engine performance. Software continuously updates vehicles, and AI increasingly assists drivers. Factories are changing as well. Instead of relying only on the experience of skill...

Korea Didn't Invent AI — So Why Did It Catch On So Fast? Not long ago, I was sitting in a café when I noticed something. A student was organizing an assignment with ChatGPT. At the next table, an office worker was asking Gemini to summarize meeting notes. A little farther away, a designer was creating video concepts with Kling. And a small online store owner was polishing product descriptions with Claude. Everyone was doing something different. Yet every screen had one thing in common. AI. Just a few years ago, AI felt like something reserved for researchers and technology experts. Today, it has quietly become another everyday tool. Living in Korea, even I have been surprised by how quickly this change has happened. It made me wonder. Korea didn't create AI. So how did it embrace AI so quickly? At first, I assumed Koreans simply liked new technology. But that explanation didn't feel complete. Then I realized something. A Country That Was Already Digital Lo...

It Was Quite a Shocking Moment In the early 2000s, something unexpected happened in Korea's cosmetics market. Back then, most people believed one simple rule: Good skincare had to be expensive. Luxury department store brands were trusted without much question. Higher price meant higher quality. Or so everyone thought. Then a new wave of affordable cosmetics appeared. People looked at the price... and couldn't believe it. "Wait... this quality at this price?" The market was surprised. But the real change came afterward. From Trusting Brands to Verifying Them People stopped trusting brands—and started checking for themselves. Before, buying skincare was simple. If it was a famous brand, sold in a department store, and expensive, it must be good. But suddenly, people started asking a different question. "Is there really that much of a difference?" They tried products themselves. Compared one product against another. Shared their experiences...