BANGKOK — Korea appears to be weathering global economic headwinds thanks to the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, with the technology investment cycle unlikely to lose steam in the near term, a senior official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said. "Trade tensions among countries are putting negative pressure on the global economy," Choi Ji-young, executive director of the IMF Asia and the Pacific Constituency Office, said during a meeting with reporters in Bangkok on Thursday, citing the Middle East crisis and the war between Russia and Ukraine as lingering sources of uncertainty. He was visiting Thailand to attend the 2026 Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank Group. "Despite these conditions, the growth forecast for South Korea has been revised upward," the director said. Earlier this week, the IMF raised its growth forecast for Korea in 2026 to 3.3 percent, citing strong semiconductor exports, driven by strong AI infrastructure demand, which more than offset the fallout from the Middle East war. The figure was up 0.7 percentage point from the organization's Jul