South Korea’s top 500 companies by assets have cut more than 11,000 jobs as the new coronavirus has continued to spread, data showed Wednesday. Local corporate tracker CEOScore surveyed the number of national pension fund subscriptions among the nation’s 500 largest companies between February and June. The pension fund subscription -- which is mandatory for regular workers -- is often used as a barometer for employment trends here. The survey showed that the 500 firms’ sub

LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo marks two years Monday since he took the helm of South Korea’s fourth-largest conglomerate. Under his new and pragmatic leadership, the group has seen quiet but significant changes. Koo became the new leader of LG on June 29, 2018, at the age of 40 after his father, Koo Bon-moo, passed away a month earlier. He inherited the group in the Confucian tradition whereupon the eldest son takes over the family business. The late Koo’s management philosophy

LG Group said Tuesday its four affiliates -- LG Electronics, LG Chem, LG Innotek and LG International Corp. -- have donated 50,000 coronavirus test kits to the Indonesian government. The donation was made in response to a request by the country, which lacks diagnostic kits due to the surge in COVID-19 cases, and to contribute to overcoming international difficulties caused by the infectious disease, the group said. Supplies of some diagnostic kits to the Indonesian National Board for Dis

Affiliates of Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics will send a total of 430 engineers to Vietnam in order to support their plants’ operations there, as the Vietnamese government has decided to exempt Korean staff from its two-week quarantine policy, according to industry sources Tuesday. Samsung Display will dispatch 180 engineers via a chartered flight from Asiana Airlines to Bac Ninh in northern Vietnam on Saturday, a source said. The engineers will stay in a quarantine facility e

The novel coronavirus is disrupting the plants of Korea’s major conglomerates, as new confirmed cases reported one after another involve their employees. On Sunday, Samsung Electronics confirmed its third case of COVID-19 infection, of a worker at its smartphone plant in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province. The Gumi site produces next-generation smartphones such as the Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Fold. The assembly line where the employee worked is temporarily closed and expected to be fully

LG Innotek announced Wednesday the company has developed a communications module for automobiles based on Qualcomm’s 5G chip as the first in the world. The 5G communications module, a combination of a communications chip, memory and radio frequency circuit, is a component that enables transmission of data between a vehicle and 5G base station. The module, as small and slim as a credit card, will enable sharing of real-time traffic information, precise location measurement and communication

LG Innotek, the electronic parts affiliate of LG Group, said Monday that the company would showcase around 20 kinds of car components at an upcoming automotive show in Japan this week. The LG affiliate will, for the first time, take part in the Automotive World 2019 that kicks off Wednesday for a three-day run in Nagoya -- where Japan’s major auto parts makers, as well as automakers like Toyota, are headquartered. The event is held in Tokyo every January and in Nagoya in September, attende

LG Innotek, electronic parts affiliate of LG Group, announced Wednesday the firm has developed flexible three-dimensional lighting for premium cars with a plan to aggressively enter the high-end vehicle market. Dubbed Nexlide-HD, it is a module for cars’ front and rear external lighting that emits bright and uniform light. The lighting module consists of a number of specialized LED packages attached to a thin substrate, which helps spread the light around 180 degrees. Previous lighting mod

South Korean tech giants Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics were among the companies that were granted the greatest number of patents in the US last year, falling within the top 10 and rubbing shoulders with IBM, Microsoft and General Electric, a report by a US patent association showed Monday. Samsung ranked No. 2 with 5,836 registered patents in the US, surpassed only by US IT giant IBM, which filed 9,088, according to the Intellectual Property Owners Association.  The Korean IT

LG Innotek said Tuesday it will start mass-producing 3D sensing modules for smartphones, including LG Electronics’ upcoming G8 ThinQ phones. The electronics parts supplier of LG Group is rolling out the time-of-flight module, known as ToF. LG Electronics had previously announced that it had adopted the ToF sensor made by Germany’s Infineon Technologies for its new flagship phone G8 ThinQ.  ToF module (LG Innotek)The ToF sensor supplied by the German firm and assembled into a module by LG Innotek

LG Innotek Co., an electronics part maker under LG Group, on Monday showcased an ultra-slim vehicle lighting module, Nexlide-L, paving the way for carmakers to develop automobiles with unique designs. (Yonhap)Nexlide is the brand name for LG Innotek‘s automotive LED lighting.LG said the latest product, Nexlide-L, is only 3 mm thick, which is significantly slimmer than the 8 mm thickness of existing models. This represents the thinnest LED lighting module in the market at present.The company said

South Korean parts manufacturer LG Innotek has mass-produced compact refrigerators with thermoelectric modules, the firm said Monday. According to LG Innotek, the recently launched table-sized refrigerator LG Objet has been incorporated with thermoelectric modules. These modules are combined with the components of thermoelements, radiator panels and radiating fans, to replace the cooling compressor system.LG Innotek's thermoelectric modules (LG Innotek)By using thermoelectric semiconductor techn

The National Pension Service, operator of the state-run pension fund, holds stakes of 10.03 percent in LG Innotek and 10 percent in Hanmi Pharmaceutical, it said in a statement Friday.The pension operator’s stake in CJ CGV, the movie theater arm under food and retail giant CJ Group, has reduced to 9.9 percent from 10.72 percent, it added.(khnews@heraldcorp.com)

LG Innotek said Wednesday it has launched visible light-emitting diodes for disinfection lighting, which is a light source with the effect of sterilization by sunlight using indoor light.The company said its 405-nanometer visible LEDs can sterilize an indoor space without having to use any chemicals by removing 99.9 percent of bacteria while the light is turned on. LG Innotek said, “As this product does not harm the human body, its sterilization function can be used in places where many people p

Offshore investors shifted to a net buying mode on South Korea's main KOSPI market last month, ending a five-month selling streak that weighed down the index, data showed Saturday.Foreigners picked up a net 373.4 billion won ($332.2 million) worth of local stocks listed on the top-tier market during the one-month period, according to the data from the Korea Exchange (KRX).It is the first time that they bought more shares than they sold since January, when they scooped up 1.98 trillion won worth