▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Science and engineering graduate programs lose appeal, shaking even Seoul National University: Over the past five years, 41.4% of admission units at Seoul National University's College of Natural Sciences and College of Engineering failed to fill their quotas, and 79 programs received no applicants at all. While applicants concentrated in AI and semiconductor majors, basic science departments saw a string of programs with zero applicants even for doctoral courses, making the imbalance unmistakable.
■ President Cites 'Shrinking Jobs,' Calls for Policy Response: President Lee Jae-myung personally called for the design of productive public jobs that move beyond simple livelihood support at a meeting of senior presidential secretaries, bringing the direction of expanded public-sector employment into view. With job losses and income polarization emerging as structural challenges, the employment safety net for new job seekers, including young adults, has taken the policy stage.
■ HD Hyundai reshapes its business map from shipbuilding to AI and nuclear power: Consolidated operating profit for the first half of this year surged 187% from a year earlier to 6.9594 trillion won, the highest since the company's launch. The business axis is shifting rapidly toward future energy fields such as HiMSEN engines for AI data centers, with orders topping 1.5 trillion won, and small modular reactors (SMRs), driving up demand for related technical personnel.
[News of Interest to University Students and Job Seekers]
1. Four in 10 Science Graduate Programs at Seoul National Fall Short of Quota
Key summary: From the 2022 academic year through this year, 376 of 909 admission units, or 41.4%, in Seoul National University's science and engineering graduate programs drew fewer applicants than their quotas, and 79 programs received no applicants at all over the five years. The personnel shortage was especially severe in doctoral programs, with three departments — the astronomy major in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and the genetic engineering major — receiving not a single applicant, and eight of 14 doctoral admission units, more than half, falling short of quota. By contrast, the interdisciplinary artificial intelligence major drew 48 applicants, more than four times its quota of 11, and the master's program in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering posted a competition ratio above 2 to 1, laying bare the tilt toward majors with strong job prospects. Professors at the university said in unison that jobs and compensation must match the five to six years invested in a doctorate, and that without long-term research funding, training basic science researchers has reached its limit.
Key summary: President Lee Jae-myung, briefed on a tentatively named "national jobs program" at a meeting of senior presidential secretaries on the 15th, called for the design of productive public jobs that raise social benefits rather than simply providing livelihood support. He said the program should be designed to enable redistribution of wealth through work, and cited as an example the formation of citizen patrol units using local governments in the field of public safety. His direct remark that this is "a time when a response is needed to the reality of shrinking jobs and income polarization" is read as formalizing the government's sense of crisis over the deteriorating labor market. Should policy take concrete shape in the direction of expanding public-sector jobs, the likelihood has grown that new public employment opportunities will open up for new job seekers, including young adults.
3. SME Minister: 'We Will Make Daejeon a Success Story Among Startup Cities'
Key summary: Lee So-young, minister of SMEs and startups, expressed her determination to develop Daejeon into a leading success story among startup cities at a meeting held at the KAIST National NanoFab Center in Daejeon. The startup city project organically connects startup resources such as talent, funding, investment and infrastructure, and is currently under way in four cities — Daejeon, Daegu, Gwangju and Ulsan — with six more set to be selected this month. Daejeon is a deep-tech startup hub dense with institutions including KAIST, Chungnam National University and the Daedeok Innopolis, ranking 296th in global startup ecosystem rankings and first outside the greater Seoul area. As the regional startup ecosystem advances, conditions are forming in which opportunities for young researchers to launch companies and find employment widen, centered on deep-tech startups.
[Reference News for University Students and Job Seekers]
4. Beyond Shipbuilding to AI Data Centers and Nuclear Power: HD Hyundai Widens Its Growth Axis
Key summary: Under Chairman Chung Ki-sun, who marked his first year in office, HD Hyundai posted consolidated revenue of 42.0113 trillion won and operating profit of 6.9594 trillion won in the first half of this year, its best performance since its launch in 2018. Cumulative orders for HiMSEN engines for AI data centers topped 1.5 trillion won, and the company poured a combined 1.4037 trillion won into new energy infrastructure businesses alone, including a new plant in Ulju County at 833.6 billion won and a dedicated SMR facility at 238.6 billion won. It is building a three-way defense partnership with U.S. firms Palantir, for AI smart shipyards, Anduril, for unmanned vessels, and Kiewit, for shipbuilding, while merging HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and HD Hyundai Mipo to strengthen combined competitiveness across large and mid-sized vessels. With HD Hyundai Group on a composite growth track spanning shipbuilding, energy, defense and AI convergence, demand for technical personnel in engineering, energy and AI is expected to expand.
5. 'Up to $3.5 Trillion in AI Assets at Risk of Impairment by 2030; 80% of Neoclouds Will Disappear'
Key summary: Market research firm Gartner warned that $3.5 trillion, or about 4,713 trillion won, in AI infrastructure spending will face depreciation risk by 2030. To cover a minimum return on invested capital (ROIC) of 12%, hyperscalers would need to generate $8.5 trillion in revenue by 2030, but the actual figure is projected to reach at most $3.6 trillion, and the firm also warned that more than 80% of neocloud providers will cease operations by 2030. Shares of AI infrastructure company CoreWeave plunged 15.5% in a single day and its probability of default within five years rose above 50%, in a day that saw AI credit risk shake financial markets. As the process of verifying profitability in the AI industry gets under way in earnest, there is a growing need to closely examine the direction of industry structural change when choosing jobs and careers in related fields.
6. U.S. Humanoid Firm Agility Robotics to List on Nasdaq in November
Key summary: Agility Robotics, a leading U.S. humanoid robot company, will enter the Nasdaq in mid-November through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Its enterprise value was set at $2.5 billion, or about 3.35 trillion won, and the company, a partner of Amazon and Nvidia, has secured an order backlog of more than $300 million by commercially deploying its bipedal robot Digit at global manufacturing and logistics sites including a Toyota plant in Canada and GXO Logistics. With rival Boston Dynamics leaning toward not pursuing a listing by 2027 and Figure AI turning to private funding, Agility is drawing attention as the first pure-play humanoid listed company on a Western exchange. As the robotics industry shifts from a theme driven by demonstration videos to a stage of proven results, demand for talent in physical AI and robotics engineering is expected to expand over the long term.
