Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it will start a new paid leave system from July, including a two-year maternity leave.  Under the scheme, the Korean tech giant will extend the length of maternity leave to two years from the current legally-binding one year. Still, maternity payments will remain the same, as only the first year is to be compensated, the company said. In Korea, a two-year maternity leave is rarely seen except for some special jobs, such as for flight attendants. Samsung has bolst

June 30, 2015

South Korea's top tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. said Monday it has sold 1 million units of its Tizen-powered smartphones, casting a brighter outlook over the non-Android operating system.  Samsung's Indian subsidiary said the sales of the Z1, which hit shelves in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in January this year, has reached 1 million units as of Wednesday.  Tizen is an open-source operating system for smart devices being promoted by Samsung, Intel, Huawei and other global tech players.

June 29, 2015

LG Uplus Inc., South Korea's smallest mobile carrier, unveiled a mobile video portal Monday that offers all existing video content from real-time TV and movies to e-learning in one single package, as part of a push into the mobile visual content business.   The mobile video portal, available through the long-term evolution network, allows users to enjoy over 130,000 visual materials such as video-on-demand, the latest movies, short TV clips and User Created Content, the mobile carrier said.   If

June 29, 2015

South Korea's top mobile carrier SK Telecom Co. said Monday it has opened a research center for fifth-generation network technology as part of efforts to tap deeper into the next-generation wireless network system.  The lab to be jointly run by Nokia Networks kicked off in the affluent Gangnam district of Seoul, and will conduct research in various areas of the 5G industry, including gigabit-level data transmission technology and cloud technologies, SK Telecom said.  "SK Telecom is spearheading

June 29, 2015

Samsung Electronics said Sunday that it had topped a consumer satisfaction index survey in the U.S. for the second consecutive year.In the survey, conducted by U.S. market researcher J.D. Power, the Seoul-based tech giant topped the list by scoring 871 points out of 1,000 in the category of 50-inch TVs or larger, and 856 in the category of TVs smaller than 50 inches.Samsung, aiming to hold its lead in the U.S. large screen TV industry, expected that the results of the report would lead to robust

June 28, 2015

 South Korea reported an additional case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) on Saturday,bringing the total number of people diagnosed with the disease here to 182.    No additional fatalities have been reported since Friday with the country's death toll standing at 31, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.    The latest case involved a nurse who apparently got infected while treating a patient.    Some 90 hospitals throughout the country have been affected by the disease, most

June 27, 2015

U.S. tech giant Apple Inc. officially began sales of its first smartwatch in South Korea on Friday, heralding a fierce battle with Samsung Electronics Co. to gain the upper hand in the wearable market. Along with six other countries, the Apple Watch is now available at online and offline shops in South Korea, roughly two months after it went on sale in major markets including the United States and China.While the Apple Watch boasts similar key technologies as other wearables such as healthcare-r

June 26, 2015

Naver Corp., South Korea's top Internet portal operator, said Thursday it has started a mobile payment service as part of a push into the fast-growing online platform business for e-commerce. Naver Pay, available starting Thursday, allows users to pay for an item online only with their Naver IDs, a stark contrast to existing mobile payment tools offered by other financial and IT firms here that usually require multiple procedures for ID verification, the company said. This is possible once users

June 25, 2015

U.S. tech giant Apple Inc. is set to release its first smartwatch in the South Korean market later this week, facing off with its archrival Samsung Electronics Co. in the wearable device segment, industry sources said Thursday.Released in the United States in April, the Apple Watch has been gathering popularity abroad, with industry tracker Slice Intelligence claiming the sales reached 2.79 million units through June, emerging as a threat for Samsung who tapped the smartwatch market in 2013.Indu

June 25, 2015