Science Ministry mulls developing system to warn crowd crush

South Korea's science ministry is considering to develop a system that could warn authorities of potential crowd crush accidents by using digital data and technology to predict risk elements and the route of crowd movements. The new system was proposed at an emergency safety inspection meeting held by the Ministry of Science and ICT on Monday following the death of 154 people in a crowd crush that occurred Saturday evening during Halloween celebrations in Itaewon, central Seoul. “We h

Oct. 31, 2022

Naver to inject W5.2b for joint research on AI-based content with Univ. of Toronto

Naver said Monday it will inject 5.2 billion won ($3.6 million) over the next five years, along with Canadian social storytelling platform Wattpad which has become part of the company last year, to conduct joint research on AI-based content service platforms with the University of Toronto. South Korean internet giant said this study would allow application of advanced, exclusive technologies to Wattpad’s content platform leading to more innovative user experience. Naver bought Wattpad at

Oct. 31, 2022

SK hynix says Arm stake acquisition 'not underway'

South Korean memory chip maker SK hynix said it is not pursuing a plan to acquire a minority stake in the United Kingdom-based semiconductor intellectual property firm Arm, a filing showed Monday. "(SK hynix) has put various strategic options on the table to strengthen our competitive edge and enhance shareholder value, but we hereby notify that there is no ongoing process for consortium-based acquisition of Arm as of now," read the firm's recent filing with the Financial Supervis

Oct. 31, 2022

Samsung Biologics looks to woo global clients at CPhI Worldwide

FRANKFURT -- Samsung Biologics, the world’s largest contract manufacturing and development organization by production capacity, is looking to attract global customers at this year’s Convention on Pharmaceutical Ingredients Worldwide, officials said Monday. CPhI is one of the biggest international pharma industry events that draws leading businesses and professionals from across the globe. Taking place in major European cities each year, this year’s event is held in Frankfurt, G

Oct. 31, 2022

Korean electronic firms lag behind in renewable transition

South Korean electronics giants are facing calls to accelerate renewable transition and set up climate goals across the supply chain, despite earlier pledges to go carbon neutral across their operations. In a report Friday by environmental group Greenpeace and grassroots organization Stand.earth, Korean electronics goods sellers Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics were ranked "F" in terms of progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, on the scale of "A" to "F.

Oct. 28, 2022

Samsung's operating profit falls 30% amid grim outlook

Samsung Electronics' operating profits dropped by more than 30 percent on year, despite record sales, amid the weakening business environment in the semiconductor sector. According to Samsung Electronics on Thursday, the company logged 76.78 trillion won ($54 billion) in sales and 10.85 trillion won in operating profits in the third quarter. The company’s device solutions unit, which is in charge of Samsung’s chip businesses, saw its operating profits almost halve to 5.12 trillion wo

Oct. 27, 2022

Science Ministry mulls guideline for Kakao to compensate free-service users

The Ministry of Science and ICT said Thursday that it is mulling writing a guideline on how tech giant Kakao should compensate its free-service users who suffered damages during its service outage earlier this month. The government hopes that the guideline, which would be the first of its kind, would help expedite the compensation process under a "first compensate" principle, a ministry official told Yonhap. This comes after Kakao Chief Executive Officer Hong Eun-taek said the company

Oct. 27, 2022

Blockchain firm X-widget tests art NFT service with gallery

Blockchain company X-widget said it began a pilot service of a platform for non-fungible tokens that it developed with a major local art gallery to use NFTs as proof of ownership of digital assets such as artworks. The NFT Contest Market Your Own Pick, or NCOP, is a Web 3.0 platform that allows users to discover and assess the value of artworks using NFTs. It is a blockchain-based decentralized application that will be officially launched at the end of this year. Based on a strong community of a

Oct. 27, 2022

X-widget's AIIN to provide information all about virtual assets

Blockchain company X-widget said Thursday it is developing a virtual asset information-providing solution called Artificial Intelligence Index (AIIN) by combining artificial intelligence and big data technologies. The service is set to launch in early 2023. The new service will use X-widget’s independent blockchain platform to provide virtual asset-related indexes, a prediction on virtual asset prices, a collective virtual asset management service, and an investment community network servi

Oct. 27, 2022

Taking Samsung’s top post, Lee Jae-yong vows to seek out transcending technology

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong has been promoted to chairman of the world's largest chipmaker and smartphone maker, ending a high-profile succession process that took more than three decades to complete, with a vow to invest in transcending technology that could reboot the tech giant's growth engine. Lee, 54, was crowned Samsung Electronics' new executive chairman with the board of directors' approval Thursday morning, 10 years after he held the vice chairman

Oct. 27, 2022

Boryung acquires Korean rights to Eli Lilly’s lung cancer drug

South Korean drug maker Boryung has acquired the selling rights of Alimta, a non-small cell lung cancer treatment developed by US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, for the local market. According to Boryung on Tuesday, the acquisition agreement also included the copyright and licensing rights of Alimta in the country. First introduced in Korea in 2006, Alimta was the first drug to significantly reduce the anti-cancer drug’s adverse effects and toxicity while improving the survival rate of

Oct. 26, 2022

Tech giants tighten belts amid uncertainties, bleak outlook

South Korean electronics giants are bracing for uncertainties across the board, with some leading exporters mapping out belt-tightening plans to address the situation that some have described as grave as the 2008 global financial crisis. Memory chip supplier SK hynix is one of the companies hit hardest by slowing consumer demand and the US-China tech arms race. The memory chip downcycle follows a pileup of order backlogs, and uncertainties are growing in its Chinese operations due to semiconduct

Oct. 26, 2022

Seoul holds 1st World Bio Summit

The South Korean government on Tuesday kicked off the first World Bio Summit, a joint event with the World Health Organization to gather leaders of the vaccine and biotechnology industry to discuss innovations and ways to strengthen global health security. President Yoon Suk-yeol highlighted the importance of solidary and cooperation that go beyond the borders to prepare for humanity’s common adversity of new infectious diseases and pandemics. “Global society should work together

Oct. 25, 2022

SK hynix samples fastest next-gen standard memory module

South Korean memory chip supplier SK hynix said Tuesday it has shipped the world's fastest DRAM module under the double data rate 5 standard, considered a next-generation memory technology. SK hynix shipped memory module samples that boast up to a 6,400-megabit-per-second data transfer speed and 32-gigabyte memory density earlier this month, according to the company, without specifying the date. It added the integration of the clock driver in the new samples has improved the signal integrit

Oct. 25, 2022

Samsung still tight-lipped on Lee Jae-yong's succession

A memorial service honoring the late Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee was held Tuesday, without a major announcement made by the electronics giant in regards to a succession plan for his son to ascend to the top leadership. Speculation has been building recently that Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong might be promoted to the chairman post, using the memorial service for momentum. Lee has held the "vice chairman" position for the past decade. Lee's eventual ass

Oct. 25, 2022

Kakao founder considers sweeping compensation for service blackout

Kim Beom-su, founder of South Korean online platform behemoth Kakao, said Monday that he will consider providing across-the-board compensation for users who suffered damages due to the company’s unprecedented service malfunction caused by a fire at an SK C&C data center on Oct. 15. "We are currently accepting damage reports from the users, so it is difficult to specifically tell the type and size of our compensation. We are reviewing all measures to help (users) recover,”

Oct. 24, 2022

KAIST develops brain-machine interface that controls robotic hands just by thought

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology said Monday they succeeded in developing a brain-machine interface system which interprets brain signals to allow patients to control robot hand movements only by thought. By studying the electrocorticograms of epilepsy patients when they imagine hand movements, research teams led by KAIST’s brain and cognitive engineering professor Jeong Jae-seung and Seoul National University’s Medical School professor Chung Chun

Oct. 24, 2022

Korean chipmakers suffer decline in market cap, profitability

  South Korean chipmaking giants have suffered a decline in their market capitalization and profitability due to heated competition from Chinese rivals and a heavy tax burden, data showed Monday. Of the world's top 100 chipmakers in the world by average market cap from January to September period, only three local players -- Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and SK Square -- were listed, according to the Federation of Korean Industries, a lobby group based in Seoul, citing data from S&P Cap

Oct. 24, 2022

[Newsmaker] Depression, panic disorder fester in Korea as social stigma persists

Two-hundred and fifty-six. That's the number of people between age 10 and 20 that took their lives due to mental health problems last year. Of a total 13,205 deaths by suicide in 2021, some 5,258 had histories of mental health treatment, according to police data provided by Rep. Oh Young-hwan of the main opposition Democratic Party. The same data shows that the number of suicides aged 10-29 age groups jumped each year from 2019, with the figure for the latter marking 888 as of 2021. The figures

Oct. 24, 2022

Digital crisis management body planned in wake of Kakao outage

The South Korean government will set up a digital crisis management headquarters to launch an all-year-round system that inspects and supervises the country’s digital infrastructure and services, the Ministry of Science and ICT said Friday. The government’s plan came in the wake of Kakao’s server outage caused by a fire at SK C&C’s data center building, which led to a breakdown of the country’s most popular messaging app KakaoTalk for over 10 hours on Oct. 15. M

Oct. 23, 2022