South Korea’s Framework Act on Artificial Intelligence Development and Establishment of Trust, commonly known as the AI Basic Act, went into enforcement on January 22, 2026. The timing matters. South Korea is now the first country in Asia with a comprehensive, binding AI governance law that carries extraterritorial reach, transparency obligations, and mandatory risk assessments…
January 1, 2026 brought a cluster of regulatory changes in China that, individually, might be described as incremental. Taken together, they represent a material shift in how foreign companies must structure their operations, manage their data, and price their risk. The most technically significant change is the new Value-Added Tax Law, which replaced the existing…
The first trading week of 2026 sent a clear message to global investors who had been underweighting Asian equities: this region is not waiting for permission to rally. South Korea’s Kospi closed at a record 4,309.63 on January 2, climbing 2.27% in a single session. Samsung Electronics surged roughly 7% after reports that customers praised…
