The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an additional 16-month jail sentence to former Samsung Electronics Vice President Kang Kyung-hoon for his attempts to break up a labor union in South Korea‘s largest conglomerate. This is the final court ruling that found the executive guilty over his scheme to sabotage labor union activities at Everland, an operator of an amusement park in Korea. Everland was considered a key affiliate in Samsung’s corporate structure, and has been merged into S

Industry March 17, 2022

Netflix proposed ways to reduce the burden on network providers in the first appellate court hearing over whether the streaming service is liable to pay network usage fees to SK Broadband. The court hearing, held Wednesday evening at the Seoul High Court, is the first since a preliminary hearing took place in December. The case follows a district court ruling in June that gave SK Broadband an upper hand -- the first ruling in the world over which party is obliged to pay network usage fees. Bo

Technology March 17, 2022

Samsung Electronics’ latest announcement to invest 15.88 billion rupees ($207.8 million) to set up a new refrigerator parts plant in India will not affect its household appliance factory operation in Jiangsu province, China, according to the consumer electronic goods company Wednesday. Samsung’s plan in conjunction with the provincial government of Tamil Nadu for the plant comes after former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Edappadi Palaniswami, in 2020 called on global tech giants inc

Technology March 16, 2022

SK Siltron, South Korea‘s sole silicon wafer maker for chips, plans to spend a combined 1.05 trillion won ($845.61 million) to build a new fab that manufactures 300-millimeter wafers in order to address a chip shortage due to wafer supply constraints, a filing showed Wednesday. With a board approval Tuesday, the key silicon wafer supplier to the country’s chip powerhouses Samsung Electronics and SK hynix aims to embark on the fab construction in the first half at a 42,716 square-me

Technology March 16, 2022

SK Geo Centric announced Tuesday a $55 million investment in US-based waste plastic recycling firm PureCycle Technologies, as well as plans to create a joint venture with the US firm within this year. SK Geo Centric was the new investor taking part in PureCycle‘s $250 million private fundraising via common stocks, announced March 9, along with existing shareholders including Sylebra Capital and Samlyn Capital. The net proceeds will support the construction of PureCycle plants in Ohio and

Industry March 15, 2022

An upcoming electric vehicle battery plant in Turkey built by South Korean company SK On is the latest testament that its battery alliance with US carmaker Ford is ever becoming stronger. On Monday, SK On announced plans to set up a new plant on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey, with an annual capacity of between 30 and 45 gigawatt-hour starting as early as 2025, in a deal with US carmaker Ford and Turkish conglomerate Koc. The battery arm of South Korea-based conglomerate SK, Ford and Koc hav

Technology March 15, 2022

South Korean conglomerates Samsung and Posco on Monday each announced plans to build production lines of solid-state batteries, an up-and-coming technology in making fireproof and energy-dense lithium-ion batteries that can boost electric vehicle range. Samsung SDI, a battery arm of Korea’s largest conglomerate by assets, said the company has started the construction of a 6,500-square-meter pilot assembly line for manufacturing solid-state batteries that power electric cars in Suwon, Gye

Technology March 14, 2022

Seoul-based LG Electronics announced Monday that it is working with Korean American robot engineer Dennis Hong to develop a robotics solution for the logistics sector. The collaboration between LG Electronics’ Advanced Robotics Lab and Hong, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, is aimed at promoting “advances in robotics technology to a wider audience” so that products can be shipped from warehouses to customers mor

Technology March 14, 2022

The National Pension Service, the second-largest shareholder of South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics, is poised to vote against Kyung Kye-hyun, who was named head of Samsung’s chip business in December, a disclosure showed Sunday. As the public pension fund of Korea with 8.53 percent voting rights, NPS cited Kyung’s “history of undermining the enterprise value or violating shareholders’ rights,” without elaborating further. Kyung was one of three board mem

Industry March 13, 2022

BARCELONA, Spain -- The early 5G rollout in South Korea brought Switzerland-based ID Quantique’s quantum-safe technology to life on smartphones, backbone networks and will potentially be on mobile camera modules and cars. With outcomes and prototypes in Asia keen on 5G penetration, primarily with its controlling shareholder SK Telecom, IDQ looks to take its aim back at Europe as its continent-wide quantum network infrastructure project is starting to crystalize. “The first deploym

Technology March 13, 2022

BARCELONA, Spain -- The South Korean Minister of Science and ICT Lim Hye-sook said the government signed a memorandum of understanding with GSMA, host of the Mobile World Congress 2022, to support mutual interests in the metaverse and its ecosystem development. Under the agreement, the ministry will share information in regard to the progress of the metaverse ecosystem in Korea with GSMA. In return, GSMA is set to present Korea to its members and developers around the world so that Korean busin

Technology March 3, 2022

BARCELONA, Spain -- South Korea is on course to become the first country in the world where its mobile carriers scale up its 5G network capacity to more than 100 MHz-bandwidth for a single operator. At the Mobile World Congress 2022 exhibitions, three network equipment suppliers -- Huawei Technologies, Ericsson-LG and Nokia -- unveiled the most recent updates of their 5G equipment. Representatives say these could help Korean telcos improve the quality of 5G delivery by doubling the bandwidth o

Technology March 3, 2022

BARCELONA, Spain -- The 5G network solutions by Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies could be a game changer in South Korea as its companies are now left vulnerable to a controversial workplace safety law that came into effect in January. At the Mobile World Congress 2022 held in Barcelona, Spain, Huawei’s exhibition at Hall 1 presented 5G solutions that enable automated disaster prevention, currently deployed across China. One of the solutions exhibited is a mining site run by unmann

Technology March 3, 2022

BARCELONA, Spain -- The board of GSMA, the host of Mobile World Congress 2022, has greenlighted a plan urging video streaming service providers to share telecom carriers’ costs of expanding broadband infrastructure, amid lingering conflicts over charging more network usage fees to those causing heavy internet traffic. The plan was proposed by a policy group under GSMA, which called on global content providers including Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ to contribute more

Technology March 2, 2022

BARCELONA, Spain -- Samsung Electronics will discontinue its phablet Galaxy Note series to make way for the high-end Galaxy S22 Ultra lineup, Samsung’s mobile business head said Monday. “The Ultra line for S series will fill in the Galaxy Note lineup every year from now on,” Roh Tae-moon, president and head of Mobile eXperience business at Samsung Electronics, told reporters at MWC 2022 during his visit to Samsung’s exhibition. Samsung’s MX business oversees hands

Technology March 1, 2022