Daily Woody | Jul 27, 2026 — Nvidia Takes 4.5% of Naver for $1bn
Naver told regulators on Monday it will issue 7,241,564 new shares to Nvidia at 204,500 won each, raising about 1.481 trillion won, or roughly $1.01 billion. Nvidia becomes the sole subscriber to the third-party allotment and will hold 4.5% of Korea's largest internet company — its third-largest shareholder. Payment is due October 30 and the new shares list on November 20.
The money funds an AI data centre at Naver's GAK Sejong site. Naver plans 55 megawatts by mid-2027, 100 megawatts by that December and 200 megawatts in 2028, running Nvidia's Blackwell and Vera Rubin platforms. Seoul Economic Daily puts the 200-megawatt stage at roughly 100,000 high-end GPUs. Naver's stated long-term ambition is one gigawatt.
The wider project runs to about $10 billion. Brookfield has signed a non-binding term sheet for up to $9 billion; Naver covers the remainder. Nvidia's investment carries a precondition: Naver must separately secure at least $9 billion in computing infrastructure. The two sides signed on July 24 in California, with President Lee Jae Myung present at an AI summit in San Francisco. Naver also said it will cancel 4,901,094 treasury shares worth about 1.017 trillion won on August 3. This is Naver's first third-party allotment since it moved to the KOSPI main board in 2008.
This is not Nvidia's first equity position in a company that buys its chips. CNBC counted more than $40 billion in Nvidia investment commitments in 2026 alone, including up to $100 billion pledged to OpenAI. Free cash flow last fiscal year was $97 billion. Goldman Sachs analysts have described the pattern as closer to circular revenue. Wedbush's Matthew Bryson wrote that the investments fit the circular theme while also building a competitive moat if Nvidia executes.
Nvidia's $1 billion is the firmest commitment in a $10 billion project, and it is one tenth of it. Brookfield's $9 billion is a term sheet — an intention to finance, not contracted capital — and Nvidia's own money is conditional on Naver locking that down. Much of what the remaining nine tenths buys is Nvidia silicon. The chip supplier has taken an equity position in the customer, and the customer's ability to draw that equity depends on ordering more chips. For Nvidia, $1 billion is four days of last year's free cash flow.
The electricity is the part with no signature on it. One gigawatt is close to a single large reactor: the two units Korea approved for Yeongdeok last month are 1.4 GW each, targeted for 2037 and 2038. Meanwhile the industry ministry finalised its 16th Long-Term Natural Gas Plan on the same day, projecting power-sector gas demand down 42.5% by 2038 — with a footnote that semiconductor and AI data-centre demand will be recalculated once the 12th electricity plan is complete. The GPUs have a delivery schedule through 2028. The power to run them is still a footnote in a plan that runs to 2038.
The USTR's final action in 60 Section 301 forced-labour investigations took effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on July 24. The 60 economies account for 99.4% of US imports.
Rates split three ways. Seventeen economies including the UK, India, Mexico and Canada pay a flat 10%. The EU and Taiwan pay 10% net of the most-favoured-nation duty. Japan, South Korea and Switzerland get the same net-of-MFN treatment capped at 12.5% — meaning that where an existing MFN duty already meets the cap, the Section 301 rate is zero. The remaining 38, China and Brazil among them, pay a flat 12.5%.
Seoul had argued in June that the factual findings against Korea were wrong, and still drew a higher rate than Mexico or India. Trade minister Kim Jung-kwan and negotiator Yeo Han-koo met Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and USTR Jamieson Greer in Washington last week. They pressed a single point: forced-labour and overproduction Section 301 duties combined must not breach 15%, the ceiling Korea secured last year. That leaves 2.5 percentage points of headroom, and the overproduction investigation is still open.
The Seoul Central District Court delivers its first-instance verdict on former president Yoon Suk Yeol's alleged breaches of the Public Official Election Act at 2 p.m. Monday. The court has authorised a live broadcast.
Two statements are at issue, both from his 2022 presidential campaign: a December 2021 club debate remark denying he had introduced a lawyer to a former tax office chief, and a January 2022 interview remark denying that he and his wife Kim Keon-hee had met the shaman known as Geonjin Beopsa. The special counsel sought two years in prison.
The financial stake is larger than the sentence. A confirmed fine of one million won or more obliges the People Power Party to return roughly 39.7 billion won in reimbursed campaign expenses. A separate appeal, over drone flights to Pyongyang, opens Wednesday.
Korea reimburses campaign spending for candidates clearing a vote threshold, and claws it back if the winning candidate is later convicted of an election-law offence carrying a fine of one million won or more. Because the money went to the party rather than the candidate, a conviction here reaches the People Power Party's balance sheet, not Yoon's.
A white van drove into a crowd in Berlin's Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. on Saturday, a few hundred metres from the closing party of Christopher Street Day near the Brandenburg Gate. Police say the crash killed a woman and injured 29 others, some critically. The driver left the vehicle after it hit a tree and attacked others with a machete before fleeing.
Police identified the suspect as Abdul Ballout, 21, a German citizen of Lebanese descent born in Germany in 2005. Officers found him on Sunday around 6 p.m. at an allotment garden complex in the Spandau district. He rushed at them with a blade, and Berlin's SEK tactical unit opened fire. Resuscitation failed at the scene.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt pointed to a history of radicalisation and called an Islamist terror attack the likeliest explanation. Prosecutors disclosed that Ballout had previously attempted to travel to Syria to join Islamic State. Hundreds gathered at the Brandenburg Gate on Sunday afternoon to lay flowers.
Israel's security cabinet approved on Sunday the legal framework allowing the International Stabilization Force to enter Gaza, part of President Trump's 20-point plan. An Israeli official told Reuters the mission will number 200 people from friendly countries such as Uganda and Morocco
, deploying in areas outside Israeli military control.
Israel keeps a veto: each contributing country requires individual approval, and the force operates in full coordination with the Israeli military. Israel gave no deployment date. Israel's public broadcaster KAN reported the decision opens the way to establishing a headquarters near Rafah. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir voted against.
Hamas has refused to disarm, arguing that Israel is demanding demilitarisation while withholding its own first-phase obligations. Israel has said it will expand its area of control to 70% of the enclave, where it continues near-daily strikes. Netanyahu departs for Washington on Monday and is expected to meet Trump on Tuesday.
Two hundred personnel were approved for a territory of more than two million people. Each contributing country requires separate Israeli sign-off. The force may deploy only where Israel does not exercise control, and Israel has stated it intends to control 70% of the enclave. As the second figure rises, the ground available to the first contracts.
Nothing in the underlying deadlock changed on Sunday. Israel still wants disarmament first; Hamas still wants phase-one compliance first. What changed is that Netanyahu now travels to Washington with a cabinet decision in hand rather than without one, and the approval landed exactly one day before departure. That sequence is worth noting on its own terms. The Tuesday meeting also arrives days after the US completed a fresh round of strikes inside Iran on July 20, with mediators putting a ten-day ceasefire proposal to both capitals. Gaza and Iran are unlikely to stay on separate agenda lines.
Fires around Gironde west of Bordeaux and in the Ávila and Madrid regions have pushed combined evacuations past 300,000, NPR reported on Sunday. French interior minister Laurent Nuñez said about 50,000 people left overnight into Sunday, taking the French total above 250,000. Counts vary by outlet and cut-off time, ranging from roughly 265,000 to over 300,000.
Spain declared a national state of emergency. A 78-year-old man with limited mobility died near his orchard in Manises, north-west of Valencia. The Madrid region has evacuated more than 29,000 and confined over 20,000 indoors; Ávila province has evacuated more than 25,000. France deployed 1,500 soldiers and 1,700 security personnel alongside about 1,400 firefighters. Both countries are drawing firefighting aircraft from other EU states. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Spain has already burned more than 300,000 acres this year, against a ten-year average of 250,000.
Seconded prosecutors and police begin returning to their home agencies from the Comprehensive Special Counsel on Monday. Kookmin Ilbo reported that one seconded prosecutor leaves for his home district office today, along with some police officers whose secondment periods expire this month.
The revised special counsel act took effect on July 21. It allows the president to grant a 30-day extension and raises the cap on seconded officials from 130 to 150. The team said the departures involve people whose home police agencies could not extend the secondment given their own staffing.
The mandate runs to August 23, less than a month away. Investigators questioned former land minister Won Hee-ryong for 13 hours last week.
Korea's special counsel teams are temporary bodies created by individual statutes, staffed largely by prosecutors and police seconded from the very agencies whose past work they are re-examining. This second Comprehensive Special Counsel, led by Kwon Chang-young, is a single team reviewing cases across the martial-law, Kim Keon-hee and Marine-death investigations — including several the earlier teams closed without charges.
The headcount cap and the actual headcount moved in opposite directions in the same week. Parliament raised the ceiling by 20; six days after the law took effect, prosecutors and police walk out the door. The two numbers are set in different places. The National Assembly writes the cap; the prosecution service and the National Police Agency decide who is actually released. A special counsel's working capacity sits in someone else's staffing spreadsheet.
The remaining targets are sitting lawmakers and the former presidential office — precisely the subjects that consume the most investigative hours and generate the most resistance. This extension delivered time without people, which is why voices inside the team are urging restraint on warrant requests. By August 23 the more revealing measure may not be what was charged, but what was left untouched.
Last year 27.7% of households headed by someone aged 39 or under owned the home they lived in, according to the national statistics agency's KOSIS database. That is down 2.4 percentage points from 30.1% and the lowest since the age brackets were redefined in 2017. At the 2018–2019 peak the figure was 40.7%.
Older cohorts barely moved: 63.5% for people in their fifties, down 0.6 points, and 68.5% for those 60 and over, down 0.4. The gaps — 35.8 points and 40.8 points respectively — are the widest on record. Net worth diverged too. Under-40 households averaged 219.5 million won, down 0.9%, while households in their fifties rose 7.9% to 551.6 million won and those 60 and over rose 3.2% to 535.9 million won.
The class gap widened alongside it. Home ownership in the bottom net-worth quintile fell to 6.8%, a record low, against 84.2% in the top quintile. Average value of the home lived in was 686.8 million won in the top quintile and 5.85 million won in the bottom, a ratio of 117 to one. Since 93% of bottom-quintile households own nothing, that average is mostly zeros.
The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs held its UN Forces Participation Day ceremony at 10 a.m. Monday at the KBS Hall in Yeouido, Seoul, marking 73 years since the Korean War armistice. For the anniversary programme the ministry invited 73 veterans and family members from the 22 UN contributing nations, who visited the War Memorial in Yongsan on Sunday. Minister Kwon Oh-eul said today's Republic of Korea rests on the sacrifice of those nations and their roughly 1.98 million service members. A thank-you dinner follows in the evening at the Grand Hyatt Seoul. The Unification Ministry was scheduled to hold its second border-area peace and safety council at the government complex the same morning.
North Korea marks the same date as Victory Day in the Fatherland Liberation War. The Korean Central News Agency and Rodong Sinmun reported on Sunday that Kim Jong-un sent gifts to war veterans nationwide, and that veterans and wartime service honourees invited to the anniversary events had arrived in Pyongyang.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy finalised and published its 16th Long-Term Natural Gas Supply and Demand Plan on Monday, covering 2026 through 2038.
The ministry projects baseline demand falling from 45.91 million tonnes this year to 41.00 million in 2038, an annual decline of 0.94% and 10.7% over the period. The composition pulls in two directions: city-gas demand rises from 23.56 million tonnes to 28.16 million, up 1.50% a year, while power-sector demand drops from 22.35 million to 12.84 million, a 42.5% fall. That power figure rests on the 11th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply. The ministry said demand shifts from its three flagship projects — semiconductors, physical AI and AI data centres — will be revised once the 12th electricity plan is settled. The plan cites power supply for the Honam semiconductor complex as a further variable.
Storage moves the other way. Citing Middle East instability, the ministry will open the state gas reserve system to private participants, including self-consumption direct importers. It will lean on existing public infrastructure instead of new construction, and build an integrated register of public and private imports and inventory.
The industry ministry said on July 24 that the eighth round of maximum petroleum prices would hold at the seventh round's levels for four weeks from midnight on the 25th: 1,784 won a litre for petrol, 1,773 for diesel, 1,380 for kerosene. It also extended a fuel tax cut due to expire this month through September.
Brent crossed $100 a barrel on July 23 for the first time since May 26, after renewed US–Iran military tension, a Houthi declaration of a Red Sea blockade and reports of a Saudi tanker strike. July's averages remain below June's, however, at $82 for Brent, $77 for WTI and $75 for Dubai.
Yang Ki-wook, the ministry's resource security chief, cited inflation running in the 3% range and the Bank of Korea's rate rise. The cap currently sits about 100 won a litre below refiners' estimated supply price for petrol and about 300 won below for diesel and kerosene. Yang said the ministry could adjust before the four weeks are up if conditions shift sharply.
Korea Meteorological Administration, issued 11:00 on July 27. Heat and tropical nights persist nationwide. Central regions and northern North Gyeongsang stay cloudy while the south and Jeju are mostly clear, with scattered showers in the capital area and Gangwon until late evening, and in northern Chungcheong and northern North Gyeongsang from mid-morning.
| Mon 27 | Tue 28 | Wed 29 | Thu 30 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 22.7–27.3°C | 22–26°C | 22–26°C | 21–27°C |
| High | 31–38°C | 31–36°C | 31–37°C | 30–38°C |
| Sky | Cloudy north clear south | Cloudy north and Gyeongbuk | Cloudy north | Cloudy north |
| Region | Rainfall |
|---|---|
| Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi | 5–60mm |
| Gangwon inland and mountains | 5–60mm |
| Gangwon east coast | 5–30mm |
| Northern Chungnam, central and northern Chungbuk | 5–40mm |
| Northern Gyeongbuk | 5–40mm |
Two official documents landed within a day of each other. Both are best read by their dates.
USTR opened 60 forced-labour investigations on March 12. It published its determinations and proposed action on June 2. The President signed the directing memorandum on July 23. The duties took effect at 12:01 a.m. on July 24 — seven hours after the global 10% tariff they replaced expired. Korea's ceiling is 12.5%, above the 10% applied to Mexico and India. Seoul had argued in June that the findings against it were factually wrong.
Korea's industry ministry published its twelve-year natural gas plan on Monday. It projects power-sector demand down 42.5% by 2038, then records that semiconductor and AI data-centre demand will be recalculated once the 12th electricity plan is finalised. On the same day Naver accepted $1 billion from Nvidia toward a facility whose stated end-state is one gigawatt.
One document covers 99.4% of American imports. The other covers twelve years of Korean energy. Each defers the item that will decide how it ends: the overproduction Section 301 investigation, still open, and the 12th electricity plan, still unwritten.
Anthropic's Claude AI is used as a tool in gathering, analysing and editing the news. Readers are encouraged to apply their own judgement and cross-check independently.
© 2026 Daily Woody
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