November 1: Polish Constitutional Court suspension, Altman Samsung meeting, Halloween crowd of 160,000 and Apple regaining first place in market cap

In Poland, the pro-European centrist government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the nationalist opposition led by President Karol Navrotsky clashed over leadership of the Constitutional Court (Yonhap News). On the 30th (local time), Constitutional Court Justice Anna Corbyn-Pyotrowska, who was elected in March by the Tusk-dominated parliament, announced that she would suspend the duties of Constitutional Court President and Deputy President Bogdan Szwieckiski, who were appointed under the former nationalist right-wing Party of Law and Justice (PiS) government, and take over the operation of the court. The government deployed a large number of police to block Director Szwieczkowski's entry into the building (Yonhap News). As the opposition party strongly opposed this, labeling it a coup, President Navrotsky suspended his trip to Africa and hurriedly returned home (Yonhap News). Meanwhile, Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun held a series of meetings with the foreign ministers of Germany and Poland on the occasion of the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Atlanta, USA, and discussed strengthening cooperation in the defense and high-tech industries (Dong-A Ilbo). In the domestic online community, Theku's article 'Poland is in trouble now' ranked 3rd in total views among the 450 popular domestic articles collected on this day with about 82,000 views, and two related articles on Ruliweb (about 26,000, about 23,000 times), DC Inside (about 12,000 times), Ddanzi Ilbo (8,624 times), and Klien (8,486 times) were also posted in real time. Breaking news was shared.

In Western Europe, anti-government protests in France, sparked by high school student protests, continued in about 150 places, including Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse, on the 31st (local time), the third weekend of the week. The Ministry of the Interior estimated that 320,000 people nationwide (70,000 in Paris, 500,000 by organizers) took to the streets, and about 290 people were arrested by evening (Yonhap News). At the same time, international credit rating agency Fitch lowered the outlook for France's sovereign credit rating (A+) from 'stable' to 'negative' due to difficulties in recovering its fiscal soundness, warning of the possibility of a future downgrade (Yonhap News). In the Middle East, since the outbreak of the Iran War until last August, more than 115 missile and drone attacks by Iran and pro-Iranian militias have damaged and destroyed 26 U.S. military bases in the Middle East, including Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base (hit at least 30 times) and Camp Buring, resulting in billions of dollars in damage, according to an Associated Press satellite analysis report (Yonhap News). While Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei ordered the military to update its target database to include all US and Israeli assets in its strike range and respond without geographical restrictions, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that President Donald Trump has not yet decided to resume large-scale military operations against Iran and prefers a diplomatic solution (Yonhap News). Meanwhile, the number of early voters ahead of the U.S. midterm elections on November 3 exceeded approximately 51 million in 47 states and Washington, DC (Yonhap News).

Amid a sharp decline in technology stocks triggered by concerns about Big Tech's excessive investment in AI infrastructure, the global market capitalization ranking and the semiconductor industry were in sharp contrast. While AI semiconductor leader Nvidia plunged 4.2% in the New York Stock Exchange and was pushed down to a market cap of $4.93 trillion (approximately KRW 6,570 trillion), Apple (-1.2%), which had a relatively small decline, recorded a closing market cap of $5.03 trillion (approximately KRW 6,700 trillion), taking the top spot in the world's market capitalization for the first time in three months since the end of July. Recovered (Yonhap News). On the other hand, the NAND flash market, a storage device for data centers, continued to boom, with Japanese Kioxia Holdings' sales in the first half of fiscal 2026 (April to September) reaching 4.2471 trillion yen (approximately KRW 36 trillion), 5.4 times higher than the same period last year, and net profit at 2.1978 trillion yen (approximately KRW 18.6 trillion), 37.3 times higher than in the same half-year period. We broke the record (Yonhap News). In the domestic stock market, the KOSPI sidecar was activated a total of 55 times (27 buys, 28 sells) this year, and the average of the KOSPI 200 Volatility Index (VKOSPI) soared to 59.42, 3.3 times the average of the previous 10 years. As of October 30, the rate of decline in the 'negative compound interest' valuation of KOSPI 200 leveraged products was 29.37%. It increased to 9 times the average year (3.27%) (Electronic Newspaper).

There was also a series of large-scale follow-up news in the virtual asset and defense industries. Binance, which suffered the largest hack in history worth $6.3 billion (approximately 8.4 trillion won), has completed replenishing 90% of the stolen assets (100% for the top 10 major coins, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Tether) by mobilizing the User Asset Protection Fund (SAFU) and internal reserves, and announced that it will resume deposits and withdrawals on the 1st (Yonhap News). Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis company, analyzed that approximately 89% of the world's virtual asset hacking damage this year (average loss per case of $185.65 million), including this incident, is believed to be caused by North Korea (Yonhap News, Chosun Ilbo). In the defense industry, Hanwha Aerospace's U.S. subsidiary Hanwha Defense USA won a contract ($269 million, approximately 360 billion won, including options for three additional ships in the future) to build one U.S. Navy medium-sized landing ship (LSM) for the first time in two years since its acquisition of the Philly Shipyard in 2024 (Dong-A Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo). In the domestic community, posts on Samsung Electronics' recent status by Funny University (about 28,000 times), PGR21 (about 11,000 times), and Bobae Dream (5,974 times), DC Inside SOOP securities company report (about 15,000 times), Intel stock discussion room posts (about 12,000 times), blind banker's voluntary retirement concerns (about 12,000 times), and Clien's There was a series of posts related to the sharp decline of Intel and SanDisk (8,087, 7,015, and 6,224 times).

On the 31st, when President Lee Jae-myung refuted the opposition party's criticism of his '14 trips to 23 countries' through On the afternoon of the same day, President Lee visited the traditional markets in Cheongsong-gun and Yeongyang-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, inspecting the site of a basic income pilot project in rural areas that provides local love gift certificates worth 200,000 won per month per resident, and expressed his intention to expand (Yonhap News, Dong-A Ilbo). He also shared an article predicting a decline in Seoul house prices due to real estate agents in Gangnam and Seocho, writing, “We are now enduring the difficult path toward normalizing the asset market” (Dong-A Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo). Along with the report (Korea Economic Daily) that the number of apartments for sale in Seoul has piled up to nearly 80,000 and a transaction cliff appears, the article 'The neighborhood where housing prices have risen the most in 16 months' (6,090 times) also attracted attention in Clien.

Regarding diplomatic and passport issues, Jin Seong-jun, chairman of the National Assembly National Defense Committee of the Democratic Party of Korea, who was once denied a U.S. official visa, was issued an official visa (A-2) on the 31st, the day before his departure, and was able to complete his visit to the Pacific Command as scheduled (Yonhap News, SBS). At a press conference at the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Atlanta, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the controversy over visas for Korean lawmakers, "I believe it was an issue related to actions decades ago and we will resolve it through bilateral consultations." The People Power Party criticized it as a "diplomatic disgrace" for receiving entry approval after issuing a ruling on violation of the National Security Act in the past, while the Democratic Party countered that it was "self-harm against the national interest" (Yonhap News, Dong-A Ilbo). Meanwhile, Democratic Party lawmaker Chung Cheong-rae, who competed with Representative Kim Min-seok at the national convention, said in a YouTube broadcast that the performance and approval rating will be determined on the 100th day of Representative Kim's inauguration on the 24th of next month, and said, "I am thinking and writing one by one about what flag I will use at that time," and insisted that he should merge with the Fatherland Innovation Party by January next year (Yonhap News, Chosun Ilbo).