Samsung Electronics, the world's largest handset maker, struck a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Sunday to officially sponsor the Olympic Games until 2020, the South Korean company said. Under the deal, Samsung will sponsor South Korea's PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018 and the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020 by supplying a wide range of devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops for athletes and other participants. IOC President Thomas Bach and Lee Jae-yo

Technology Aug. 17, 2014

Samsung SDI, South Korea's top battery maker, said Sunday it has signed an agreement with China's leading power company, Sungrow, to enter the Chinese energy storage market.The deal, signed in Hufei, where Sungrow Power Supply Co. is based, allows the two companies to establish a joint venture to develop and invest in the energy storage system (ESS).Sungrow is the world's second-largest manufacturer of solar power inverters.The companies said they have not yet selected the site for their manufac

Technology Aug. 17, 2014

A provincial governor apologized Sunday on Twitter after his son was accused of beating a subordinate and sexually harassing another one in the military.The eldest son of Nam Kyung-pil, a five-term ruling party lawmaker who was elected governor of Gyeonggi Province in the June 4 local elections, is under investigation for allegedly hitting his subordinate in the stomach and face on a number of occasions since early April, military officials said.The son, a corporal, is also accused of sexually h

Politics Aug. 17, 2014

South Korea's negotiations with Bert van Marwijk, a former Dutch national head coach who had expressed interest in leading the South Korean national men's senior football team, have broken down due to a disagreement on salary and the length of his stay in the country, according to the local football association Sunday.Officials from the Korea Football Association (KFA) had been in talks with van Marwijk in Amsterdam since early August to fill the national football head coach position that has be

Soccer Aug. 17, 2014

Close to 25 percent of South Korea's military conscripts suffer from depression, some of them pushed to their limits from insults and isolated environments at barracks, a study showed Sunday.The study conducted in 2012 by Kim Sun-young, a nursing major at Seoul National University graduate school, showed that nearly 25 percent of the 288 conscripts she surveyed were suffering from depression, while 17.4 percent complained of obsessive compulsive disorder. Frequent derogatory insults and difficul

Social Affairs Aug. 17, 2014

Samsung Electronics said Sunday it began production of what is called the world's first 20-nano mobile application processor, the Exynos 5430, which can save up to 25 percent in power consumption compared to the previous model.Set to equip its new smartphone Galaxy Alpha that will hit the local market early next month, the new processor is an octa-core chip made up of four Cortex A15 cores running at up to 1.8GHz and four Cortex A7 cores of 1.3GHz.The chip features a function that activates and

Technology Aug. 17, 2014

North Korea took a swipe Sunday at South Korea's latest conciliatory proposals, saying the South should first deal with "fundamental" inter-Korean issues to mend cross-border relations.The reaction from Pyongyang came two days after South Korean President Park Geun-hye proposed in her Liberation Day speech that the two Koreas join hands in cultural heritage preservation efforts. She also invited the North to an international convention on biological diversity to be held in South Korea in October

North Korea Aug. 17, 2014

Executives of South Korea's global tech giant Samsung Electronics swept the list of the country's highest-paid CEOs in the first half of 2014, according to the latest corporate business reports, although the CEOs' bonuses were somewhat reduced because of a slowdown in business performance in the second quarter.Shin Jong-kyun, head of the company's information technology and mobile division, topped the list with 11.34 billion won(US$11.1 million), followed by his colleague Kwon Oh-hyun, leader of

Technology Aug. 17, 2014