SK Telecom, OpenAI to host hackathon

SK Telecom, South Korea's leading telecommunications carrier, said Wednesday that it will host a hackathon event with California-based startup OpenAI next month in Seoul to discover talent who are likely to lead the future artificial intelligence industry. Prompter Day Seoul 2023 will run under the theme of developing services that can help humanity through AI. Planners, developers and designers who are interested in generative AIs can participate in the competition to develop services and

Aug. 16, 2023

[Photo News] Batik-themed Ioniq 5

Indonesian Ambassador to Korea Gandi Sulistiyanto (second from left) poses with Hyundai Motor’s Ioniq 5 Batik edition during the Gaikindo Indonesia International Auto Show held in Jakarta on Thursday. The car is a special edition of Hyundai’s flagship electric compact inspired by Indonesia’s traditional dyeing technique, commemorating the 50th anniversary of bilateral ties between South Korea and Indonesia. The South Korean carmaker is the largest EV producer in Indonesia. (Cou

Aug. 16, 2023

[KH Explains] Chinese server robots gobbling up Korean market

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, local restaurants and hotels have been increasingly adopting server robots, and almost seven out of 10 are believed to be from China. According to industry estimates, there were about 5,000 server robots last year, a surge from some 3,000 units in 2021. This year, the figure is expected nearly to double to 10,000 units. In a recent report, the Korean Association of Robot Industry said China-made robots made up about 70 percent of the total number of server robots

Aug. 15, 2023

Chip inventory of Samsung, SK hits W50tr

Samsung Electronics’ chip division and SK hynix have seen their inventories surge in the first half of this year, surpassing a combined 50 trillion won ($37.3 billion), according to the semi-annual reports released by the two firms on DART, the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure board Tuesday. Samsung's device solutions division in charge of the tech giant's chip business saw total assets on its inventory jump 15.9 percent on-year to 33.7 trillion at the e

Aug. 15, 2023

'Smart fabric' generates power from sweat, movements

South Korean researchers have developed a new type of fabric that can generate electricity from sweat and body movements, opening a new chapter of next-generation smart clothes. According to the Korea Institute of Science and Technology on Tuesday, two teams of researchers at the institute’s electronic materials research center came up with the stretchable, washable energy-harvesting fabric that enables biomechanical and biochemical power generation. The researchers weaved two different fa

Aug. 15, 2023

[Photo News] More accessible home appliances

LG Electronics said Tuesday that its Universal Up’s Kit, a set of accessories that aim to enhance the accessibility of home appliances for disabled people, will be unveiled during the IFA trade show held in Berlin next month. The accessories include a detachable handle for a washing machine, a rotating rack for a refrigerator, and a silicon-based braille cover for a remote control. (LG Electronics)

Aug. 15, 2023

[KH Explains] K-culture brings tourists in, but K-maps leave them wandering

"No no. Google Maps won’t guide you well here. Oh, you downloaded the English version of Naver Map? Most of the content there is not translated." This is the line Kim Seong-hee, a guide working at the Tourist Information Center (East) in Incheon Airport Terminal 1, repeats almost fifty times a day to tourists confused about whether they can use Google Maps or local map services. Such requests constitute half her inquiries, she said. This problem isn’t new. As of April 2023,

Aug. 14, 2023

[Photo News] Farewell to Jamboree Scouts

World Scout Jamboree attendees from the Maldives depart from the LG Electronics Corporate Learning Center in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Sunday. The Korean tech giant invited Scouts from the Maldives and Finland to offer a tour of its business facilities and accommodation. (LG Electronics)

Aug. 14, 2023

[Beyond Earth] ‘Halley’s comet could have had a different name’

Halley’s Comet, arguably the most well-known comet in the world, is a short-period comet that comes close enough to the Earth about every 76 years that it can be seen with the naked eye. It was last observed in 1986 and is forecast to return in 2061. The comet is named after English astronomer Edmond Halley, who worked out the pattern by which the comet comes back to the Earth over and over. Although he did not live to see his prediction of the comet’s return in 1758 or 1759 prove tr

Aug. 13, 2023

SK hynix starts mass-production of largest low-power DRAM for mobiles

SK hynix, South Korea's No. 2 chipmaker, said Friday it has begun mass-production of a mobile DRAM that offers the industry's largest capacity aimed at minimizing power consumption and features low voltage operation for devices, including smartphones and tablets. SK hynix said the 24-gigabyte low-power double data rate 5 eXtended (LPDDR5X) mobile DRAM was first supplied to Chinese Oppo’s latest flagship smartphone, Oneplus Ace 2 Pro, which launched Thursday. “With the timel

Aug. 11, 2023

Samsung officially launches Galaxy Z Flip5, Fold5 phones in 50 countries

Samsung Electronics on Friday announced the official launch of its latest foldable smartphones -- the Galaxy Z Flip5 and Fold5 -- in some 50 countries, after record preorders for the foldables at home. Starting sales in major countries, which include Korea, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Singapore and China, the South Korean tech giant will complete the global launch by next month, the company said. The Galaxy Z Flip5 and Fold5 smartphones garnered 1.02 million preorders in seven days, surpas

Aug. 11, 2023

Doubts deepen over LK-99 superconductor

Skepticism among scientists has been deepening in the past few days over a Korean research team’s discovery of the room-temperature superconductor known as LK-99, after a slew of replication efforts have fallen short. The University of Maryland’s Condensed Matter Theory Center on Tuesday said on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, “With a great deal of sadness, we now believe that the game is over. LK-99 is not a superconductor, not even at room temperatures or at ve

Aug. 10, 2023

Nvidia’s new AI chip to offer boon for Korean chip giants’ HBM business

Nvidia’s newest AI chip utilizing the world’s first HBM3e processor is expected to boost growth for SK hynix and Samsung Electronics, the two chipmakers dominating the still-nascent High Bandwidth Memory market. Nvidia, a leading producer of GPUs based in the US, unveiled Tuesday its next-generation NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper platform at this year's SIGGRAPH Conference, an annual event on computer graphics, held from Sunday to Thursday in the US. The latest chip has been built

Aug. 10, 2023

SK hynix unveils world’s first 321-layer NAND

SK hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, unveiled samples of the world’s first 321-layer NAND and next-generation memory solutions for AI demand at a global industry conference in the US on Wednesday. At the Flash Memory Summit, the world’s biggest annual conference for the NAND flash industry running from Tuesday to Thursday, SK hynix showcased its latest NAND flash chips and made public the progress on its development of the industry’s first NAND with mor

Aug. 9, 2023

Samsung’s latest foldable phones set preorders record at home

Samsung Electronics’ new foldable smartphones -- the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5 -- have yet to be launched, but preorder figures suggest that they are likely to be a super hit. The South Korean tech giant said Tuesday that preorders for the two models amounted to 1.02 million units in South Korea, setting an all-time high record for the form factor. The preorder record marked by the previous models was 970,000 units last year. While Samsung accepted seven-day preorders until Monday ahead o

Aug. 8, 2023

KT to appoint new CEO upon shareholder approval later in Aug.

South Korean telecom giant, KT Corp., said Monday that its CEO nominee will be appointed as the company’s new chief by taking shareholders’ votes at the extraordinary shareholders meeting slated for the end of this month. KT Chief Financial Officer Kim Young-jin said at the company’s earnings conference that the firm will improve business performance in the latter half this year under a stable management system and strive to improve corporate value with the CEO nominee taking t

Aug. 7, 2023

[KH explains] LK-99: Roller coaster of excitement, deflation

A South Korean research team recently created a buzz with a claim that it has created one of the holy grails in science -- a room-temperature superconductor called LK-99 – prompting researchers around the world into a race to replicate the experiment. Two weeks after their claimed discovery, no one has yet been able to completely reproduce the sensational result that could revolutionize power grids. Amid the mixed assessment on the research's validity, the Korean team, led by Lee Suk-

Aug. 7, 2023

[Photo News] Streamlined air travel

The PASS Smart Ticket is demonstrated at a domestic airport gate, as the Korea Airports Corp. and the three major Korean telecom firms rolled out the new service Monday. The service, available at 14 major domestic airports including Seoul's Gimpo, Busan's Gimhae and on Jeju Island, enables users to verify both their ID and boarding pass in the PASS app — a digital ID service run by the telecom providers — on their smartphones. (SK Telecom, KT, LG Uplus)

Aug. 7, 2023

[Photo News] Power demand nears peak

Real-time electricity usage is displayed at the Korea Electric Power Corp.’s Seoul branch on Monday. Electricity demand is expected to peak this week, amid a record-breaking heat wave that has persisted nationwide. The government said it will closely monitor the supply situation to prevent any interruptions. (Yonhap)

Aug. 7, 2023

Samsung-backed Rainbow Robotics to co-develop firefighting robots

South Korean humanoid robotics company Rainbow Robotics said Monday it is joining a 17.4 billion won ($13.36 million) state-run project to develop robots specialized for firefighting. Overseen by the Korea Institute of Robot and Convergence, affiliated with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the project aims to create two advanced firefighter robots by 2028. One robot is designed to navigate disaster zones, with the ability to swiftly and precisely locate human presence. The other is ex

Aug. 7, 2023