SK Inc. C&C to build Korea’s 1st alternative trading system

SK Inc. C&C, the IT solutions unit of SK Group, said Wednesday that it will build South Korea’s first alternative trading system, scheduled to launch in the latter half of next year. The IT service provider will construct a comprehensive operation and management system to support the trading, brokerage, solicitation and agency services for listed securities and depositary receipts that Nextrade will carry out with its official authorization in the following year. Nextrade is an alter

Aug. 2, 2023

[KH explains] Japan’s reviving chip industry unlikely to pose direct threat to Korea – for now

Japan, which supplied more than half of semiconductors in the global market in the 1980s, is now seen revamping its strategy to reclaim past glory, introducing state subsidies and setting an ambitious goal to mass produce the most cutting-edge chips. As geopolitics is playing out to reshape the global semiconductors industry -- mainly the intense rivalry between the US and China -- eyes are on whether Japan will come to take a meaningful share in the market, where competition is already fierce.

Aug. 1, 2023

Naver Pay eyes Chinese debut this year

Naver Financial, a financial platform owned by South Korean internet giant Naver, said Tuesday it aims to introduce a mobile payment system to be used at stores in China, allowing the company to provide a better shopping experience mainly for Koreans traveling there. The company has recently signed partnership agreements with Alipay Plus and China UnionPay, two of China’s top three mobile payment services that also include WeChat Pay, as it aims to launch its popular mobile payment servi

Aug. 1, 2023

[KH Explains] Users abandoning Meta's Threads after explosive start in South Korea

Threads, the text-based social media platform built by Meta to rival Twitter, now called X, has seen a staggering decline in the number of daily active users in Korea, just within two weeks of its launch. Last Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Threads has lost more than half of its users globally, after attracting more than 100 million signups, calling the regression normal and pledging to add more features to keep users engaged. The app has emerged as the first noteworthy social

July 31, 2023

SK highlights groupwide outreach in 2023 report

SK Inc., the strategic investment holding company of South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate SK Group, published its annual environmental, social and governance reports Monday, including details of the company’s business management and climate-related finance plans. The company said it has released three such reports: the sustainability report carrying the company’s ESG management strategy; the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure with the company’s climat

July 31, 2023

LG CNS launches alliance to promote enterprise agility

South Korean IT solutions provider LG CNS said Monday it has formed a trilateral alliance with US-based Scaled Agile and Seoul-based cloud and agile service provider Open Source Consulting to strengthen its business in building and improving cloud-optimized applications. The three firms signed a memorandum of understanding to make joint efforts to explore and foster business opportunities for application modernization based on the Scaled Agile Framework, an enterprise agility framework provided

July 31, 2023

[Beyond Earth] Contec leads Korea's space foray

Over 50 space companies from across the globe gathered on Jeju Island on June 28 to attend the opening ceremony of the International Space Summit. They came together to discuss trends in the space industry, in launch vehicles, ground station networks, satellite image analysis and other areas. The two-day ISS was organized by Contec, a local startup specializing in satellite-to-ground station services. “There has never been any space conference of such a size in our country,” Lee Sung

July 30, 2023

Samsung calls 2023 milestone year for global foldable phone market

Samsung Electronics, who leads the world's foldable smartphone market, is confident it can solidify its position by selling over 10 million units of its new foldable smartphones globally this year. Samsung Electronics’ mobile head Roh Tae-moon said he sees 2023 being the "tipping point" when foldable phones gain mainstream adoption. “We expect global foldable phone shipments to exceed 20 percent of all Galaxy flagship smartphones this year,” Roh said during a pre

July 28, 2023

SK Telecom-led global AI alliance launched

Led by South Korea’s SK Telecom, a new global alliance has been formed as four major telecommunications firms from South Korea, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore join hands to expand cooperation in the artificial intelligence business. The nation’s No. 1 telecom company in terms of subscriptions said Thursday that it hosted the Global Telco AI Alliance CEO Summit, a hybrid event held both online and offline, in Seoul and gathered key executives of Deutsche Telekom, e&am

July 27, 2023

LG upbeat about automotive biz

LG Electronics, a leading home appliance supplier, said Thursday it has achieved the highest second-quarter revenue in company history at 19.9 trillion won ($15.6 billion), overcoming the sluggish demand situation the world’s consumer appliance market is experiencing. Backed with overall growth in its business portfolios, especially automotive parts and electric vehicles, LG said it will expand investment and build new manufacturing facilities overseas. In a regulatory filing, the tech gia

July 27, 2023

Samsung logs W4.3tr profit loss in chips, predicts recovery in H2

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip maker, said Thursday it will further slash memory chip production and gear up to respond to the rising demand for artificial intelligence-related chips, as its chip business reported a consecutive drop in operating profit for the second quarter this year. In a regulatory filing, Samsung reported it achieved 60 trillion won ($47.1 billion) in consolidated revenue in the April-June period, down 6 percent from the previous quarter and 22.3

July 27, 2023

[Contribution] Cybersecurity in the era of conversational AI

By Jung Chang-lim In November 2022, the release of the conversational artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT by the US startup OpenAI caused a significant impact. Unlike existing models, ChatGPT demonstrated the ability to understand the context of language and engage in conversations that resembled interactions with humans. Moreover, it even ventured into the realm of human creativity. Within just two months of its launch, ChatGPT garnered overwhelming popularity, surpassing 100 million month

July 27, 2023

[From the Scene] Samsung's new foldable phones unveiled in festive mood in Seoul

Samsung Electronics on Wednesday unveiled its new Galaxy foldable smartphone series in Seoul in front of nearly 2,000 people, including journalists, industry experts, celebrities and influencers from around the globe. The South Korean tech giant held the summer edition of the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event, at Coex in southern Seoul to introduce its latest foldable smartphone lineup -- the Galaxy Z Flip5 and the Galaxy Z Fold5. Samsung also unveiled the new Galaxy Watch 6 series and Galaxy T

July 26, 2023

Samsung's new foldable phones return with upgraded hinges, bigger screens

Samsung Electronics on Wednesday unveiled its new Galaxy foldable smartphone series with a bigger screen, lighter weight and a new hinge design, expressing confidence in realizing an “innovative foldable phone experience” for users. The South Korean tech giant kicked off the summer edition of the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event at Coex in southern Seoul at 8 p.m., with some 1,500 journalists and industry people in attendance. Wednesday’s event was all the more special to Sam

July 26, 2023

Samsung Biologics posts all-time-high earnings for H1

Samsung Biologics said Wednesday that the company’s earnings in the first half reached all-time highs, with 1.59 trillion won ($1.23 billion) in sales and an operating profit of 445.2 billion won, supported by a solid contract-winning spree. Compared with the first half of last year, Samsung Biologics' sales increased by 36 percent, while its operating profit climbed 29 percent. Samsung Biologics’ attributed its improved earnings this year to the large-scale contract manufacturi

July 26, 2023

SK hynix remains in red for 3rd consecutive quarter

SK hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, reported an operating loss of 2.8 trillion won ($2.1 billion) in the second quarter of this year, falling into the red for the third consecutive quarter amid a severe market downturn. While the quarterly loss is the second-largest since SK Group acquired the chipmaker in 2012, the company said earnings are on track for recovery with market demand increasing for high-value-added chips related to artificial intelligence technology. In a

July 26, 2023

LG’s upgradable home appliances to make global debut next year

LG Electronics introduced the new and improved version of its home appliance brand Tuesday to offer "hyperpersonalized" user experiences, raising connectivity and offering new subscription services to make doing household chores easier. Presenting the enhanced plan for the brand UP Appliance 2.0 to expand its business portfolio into nonhardware services and subscription services in Korea, the tech giant said it will be launching the upgraded brand overseas from next year. "UP Appl

July 25, 2023

Samsung likely to lose again to TSMC in chips revenue

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip maker, appears to be lagging behind its rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. in terms of revenue from its global semiconductor business for four quarters in a row amid a protracted slump in the global economy. According to industry sources on Sunday, TSMC’s second-quarter revenue slipped 10 percent on-year to $15.53 billion. It slightly beat market expectations, but failed to avoid the impact of a chip recession caused by

July 23, 2023

[Beyond Earth] Spacemap looks to revolutionize satellite orbit prediction

In February 2009, two communications satellites -- a commercial satellite owned by US-based global satellite company Iridium Communications and a Russian military satellite -- collided in space, marking the first-known collision between two satellites and resulting in over 10,000 pieces of space debris. Spacemap, a South Korean startup, is looking to bring about an evolution that makes space missions safer with its platform technology that can predict the orbits of satellites and space debris to

July 23, 2023

Upstage’s LLM tops global open-source AI evaluation

South Korea’s artificial intelligence startup Upstage said Thursday it has secured the top position in the global evaluation of large language models. The company’s 30-billion-parameter LLM scored 67 points, ahead of Meta’s LLaMa-2 (66.8 points) on the Open LLM Leaderboard operated by the AI platform, Hugging Face, as of Wednesday. Hugging Face’s leaderboard evaluates LLMs with less than 100 billion parameters on four key indicators: model’s reasoning challenge,

July 20, 2023