SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won will attend a Fair Trade Commission session next month involving SK Siltron, the antitrust body said Wednesday. The antitrust watchdog has been looking into SK Group’s 2017 buyout of LG Siltron for the past four years, following suspicions that the SK Group chairman’s personal purchase of a stake in the firm violated the law. In January 2017, the conglomerate acquired a 51 percent stake in LG’s silicon wafers manufacturing unit, now named SK Sil

Industry Nov. 17, 2021

Edible insects like fly larvae, crickets, and mealworms are hailed as a healthy and more sustainable source of protein for the mankind. But not many people seem to find them appetizing enough, at least not yet, to include them in their regular diet. For dogs and cats, it’s a different story. “Our products are loved by pets as they taste nutty and also like cheese biscuits” Kim Tae-hoon, the CEO of Foody Worm, which sells insect-based pet food, told The Korea Herald. The

Consumer Nov. 15, 2021

Solus Advanced Materials is extending its business to North America having secured a copper foil production base in Canada. The South Korean battery foil maker previously named Doosan Solus announced Monday that it has purchased a copper foil plant site with an annual production capacity of 60,000 tons in Quebec, Canada. The factory was previously a Solus property. Established in 2001 by the firm’s European unit Circuit Foil Luxembourg, it ceased operation in 2014, when Solus was acquir

Industry Nov. 15, 2021

The “Coming-M 2021” metaverse conference kicked off Monday, with representatives from around 50 companies from 11 different countries taking part. Hyundai Futurenet announced Friday that it was co-hosting the interactive metaverse conference with The Korea Herald to “make an arena where global corporations, governments, and individuals preparing for the post-pandemic era can share ideas and work together.” The conference will be held for five days from Monday to Fr

Industry Nov. 15, 2021

Korean tech giants Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics swept the CES 2022 Innovation Awards, ahead of the year’s biggest tech event to be held in Las Vegas in January. Samsung Electronics received 43 CES 2022 Innovation Award honors, including four Best of Innovations accolades. The Consumer Technology Association, which organizes the annual convention, announced Wednesday the products and technologies across 27 sectors that received the CES 2022 Innovation Award. Samsung swept the v

Technology Nov. 11, 2021

A dream team with the goal of trialing commercial air taxis by 2025 demonstrated Thursday its commercial Urban Air Mobility system, or UAM. The team consists of Korea Airports Corp., Hanwha Systems, Korea Transport Institute, Tmap Mobility and SK Telecom. UAM is a new air transportation system that involves private electric aircraft taking off and landing vertically. It can travel faster than cars as it is free from traffic on land, shortening the time to reach a destination to 20 minutes fr

Technology Nov. 11, 2021

South Korean companies are given far fewer tax breaks compared to their counterparts in Japan and the US, a report said Wednesday. According to an analysis by the Korea Economic Research Institute, the corporate tax deduction rate in South Korea in 2019 was 8.4 percent, while the rate in Japan was 24.8 percent and 18.6 percent in the US. This means that for every 100 won of tax paid, firms in the US get 18.6 won back and 24.8 won back in Japan, while in South Korea, corporations only get 8.4

Industry Nov. 10, 2021

Samsung Electronics announced Tuesday that it has successfully developed the world’s first next-generation mobile DRAM LPDDR5X (Low Power Double Data Rate 5X). According to the world’s leading maker of memory chips, the 14-nanometer-based 16-gigabit LPDDR5X with enhanced speed and storage as well as less power consumption, is expected to become the optimal memory chip solution for the advanced technology industry growing exponentially with 5G, artificial intelligence and the shift t

Technology Nov. 9, 2021

Convenience store chain CU is exporting 10,000 dalgona, the traditional Korean sugar candy from “Squid Game,” to Mongolia and Malaysia, said its operator BGF Retail. Dalgona, an old-fashioned Korean candy made using sugar and baking soda, has become an overnight sensation after the success of the Netflix show. A total of 10,000 dalgona will be shipped to Mongolia and Malaysia, 5,000 to each country, BGF said. The product will feature four different shapes -- umbrella, star, heart

Consumer Nov. 9, 2021

Artificial intelligence is on track to fundamentally change education, making personalized learning possible for every child, said Robert Hardman, chief technology officer of KidsLoop. In a recent interview with The Korea Herald, he also said artificial intelligence would be a necessity, not a luxury, in education in just a matter of five years. Hardman cited the example of medicine to explain the process of how AI can personalize education. “Medicine decoded the human genome that the

Industry Nov. 8, 2021

Some three-quarters of restaurants say they are experiencing a labor shortage, as young people continue to shun jobs in the service industry while COVID-19 has limited foreign workers from entering the country. According to a report on the labor shortage in the restaurant industry by the Korea Foodservice Industry Research Institute on Monday, 74.9 percent of 207 restaurant owners polled in a September survey said the worker crunch has worsened. Only 4.8 percent said the situation had improved

Industry Nov. 8, 2021

As artificial intelligence, big data and digital technologies emerge as the forces driving change in many traditional industries, companies that previously did not need many IT workers are hiring tech talent. But digital skills are in such a short supply nationwide there is a war for talent. One company feeling the talent crunch is Ably, a fast-growing online fashion platform that currently consists of more than 200 employees among which some 20 percent are software engineers or developers.

Technology Nov. 7, 2021

South Korean electronics giant LG Electronics said Sunday that its premium OLED TV lineup had aced recent evaluations conducted by consumer magazines from 14 countries. In particular, the OLED evo introduced this year was recognized for its outstanding performance, earning the best score from consumer outlets in seven European countries, it said. French consumer magazine Que Choisir gave LG’s OLED evo a score of 16.2, the best among the 264 TVs it reviewed. The magazine said the prod

Technology Nov. 7, 2021

As overseas tourism slowly resumes with travel bubble programs and a rise in vaccination rates, travel to Saipan logged a sharp increase last month, data showed Sunday. According to the Transport Ministry data, passengers going to Saipan from Incheon surged 178.5 percent in October to 3,900 passengers from 1,400 passengers in September. Travel to Saipan also spiked in July when South Korea launched the travel bubble with the country, exempting fully vaccinated people from mandatory quarantin

Mobility Nov. 7, 2021

To ease a nationwide shortage of emissions control fluid for diesel vehicles, the South Korean government is getting hold of a key ingredient needed to make it from the industrial sector, officials said Thursday. In Seoul and major cities across the country, diesel exhaust fluid, without which diesel trucks cannot run, is in short supply, triggering fears for disruptions in cargo delivery. There is due to be a sharp drop in urea imports from China, which supplies more than 60 percent of the

Industry Nov. 4, 2021