People enjoy Hamdeok Beach in Jocheon-eup, Jeju City, during the 2026 Jeju Leisure Healing Festival on Sept. 12.YONHAP
Happy Saturday!
In this weekend’s longer reads, we’ll take a closer look at Korea’s increasingly efficient — and highly selective — speed-dating culture, explore whether audiences are ready for AI-generated movies and examine the U.S. push for Korea to send its Cheongung-II missile interceptors to Ukraine.
We’ll also find out why Korean companies are turning to humanities majors and critical thinkers as AI takes over more basic workplace skills, and meet the people bringing national treasures to life through the National Museum of Korea’s viral artifact cosplay competition.
Here's what you need to know!
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16 strangers, 10 minutes each: Why dating in Korea comes with a time limit and a checklist
“Ding! Ten minutes are up, please switch seats."
Somewhere along the way, blind dates got a stopwatch. Ten minutes to size up a total stranger's job, hobbies and whether there's any spark at all — then the buzzer goes off, and it's on to the next one.
Korea's 20- and 30-somethings aren't just dating anymore; they're speedrunning through half a dozen strangers in a single sitting called “rotation sogaeting,” the revolving version of an arranged blind date in Korea.
AI can make movies cheaper. Getting audiences to watch is another matter.
Yes, "AI slop" is real, Korea's top AI policy official acknowledges, and yes, the flood of AI-generated content online can have “adverse effects.” At the same time, as vice chair of the presidential National AI Strategy Committee, Ha Jung-woo is pushing to broaden video creators' access to AI production tools and develop homegrown technology that would reduce Korea’s reliance on foreign AI platforms.
That dilemma was on full display at a press conference in Seoul on Monday following a screening of “Steelay,” a movie created entirely using generative AI.
What is behind the U.S. push for South Korea to send missile interceptors to Ukraine?
South Korea is facing growing calls from the United States to send its homegrown Patriot equivalent to Ukraine.
While U.S. President Donald Trump said nothing himself, he did post the headline and link of a Washington Post column titled "How Trump can help Ukraine make its own Patriot missiles" to his social media account on Sept. 4.
Two weeks earlier, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence had been more direct. Speaking to CNN from Kyiv, where he had met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Pence said South Korean interceptors should reach Ukraine by way of the United States, framing it as a chance for President Lee Jae Myung to step forward.
Books over bots? As AI takes over basic skillsets, Korean firms now court critical thinkers, humanities majors.
In Korea’s cutthroat job market, students are doing something that looks almost counterintuitive today: reading books and contemplating philosophical questions, rather than obsessing over polishing their résumés or learning about coding.
As AI seeps through professional environments and take over basic skillsets traditionally required for fresh workers, jobseekers are ironically turning toward humanities and philosophy to find their footing in areas that AI has yet to conquer.
‘People becoming the artifact’: Contestants explain how viral museum cosplay contest brings national treasures to life
The National Museum of Korea’s “Dress Like a Museum Exhibit” competition runs on the theory that the quickest way to make somebody care about a national treasure is to hand them the job of building one — quite literally.
This summer, it tested that on a webtoon artist, a special-effects makeup professional, a choreographer, a few office workers and several groups of friends looking to close out their college years with a bang, among a total of 643 people comprising 275 teams.
![A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected onto him in this illustration from May 13, 2017. [REUTERS/YONHAP]](https://image.koreajoongangdaily.com/12594508.jpg?imageId=12594508&panox=0.00&panoy=0.00&panow=100.00&panoh=100.00&heightx=33.23&heighty=0.00&heightw=40.00&heighth=100.00&width=960&height=720&format=webp&format=jpg)
