WISH TREE -- A child stands next to a wish tree set up by Hanwha Galleria and the Make-A-Wish Korea foundation at Seoul National University Children’s Hospital in central Seoul, Tuesday. The Christmas event, the first of its kind to be organized by the company, is intended to help children under treatment to celebrate the holiday season by offering gifts to those participating, according to Hanwha Galleria. (Yonhap)

South Korea’s leading mobile operator SK Telecom on Wednesday opened one of its first commercial fifth-generation base stations in the central area of Seoul, showing confidence in the planned commercialization of the world’s first 5G services in March. SKT introduced a 24-kilogram rectangular active antenna unit for the 3.5-gigahertz frequency band -- 1 meter in height and 23 centimeters in width -- installed at the rooftop of a small hotel building in Myeong-dong, one of the most crowded areas

South Korea’s biggest video game convention kicks off in Busan on Thursday, showcasing a wide range of new PC, mobile and virtual reality games being developed by major game companies here.G-Star 2018 features nearly 3,000 booths and brings together more than 650 game companies from 30 countries. US-based Epic Games, behind the hit survival shooting game “Fortnite Battle Royale” is the event’s main sponsor this year and the first foreign game company to host the expo.Korean game developers and p

New CEO talks about TMON’s strengths in product curation via flash deals, venture into fresh food biz

SK Innovation has been selected as a supplier of battery cells for electric vehicles of German automaker Volkswagen Group, becoming the group’s third partner, along with LG Chem and Samsung SDI, according to SK Innovation on Wednesday. (AP/Yonhap)Under the automaker’s road map “E,” Volkswagen plans to unveil 50 types of electric cars by 2025, based on its MEB platform, a modular car platform for electric cars developed by the group and its subsidiaries. It will need battery capacity of over 150

Naver Labs, the research and development arm of search engine giant Naver, and local car-sharing firm SoCar have signed an agreement to cooperate in the development of driver assistant technologies and detailed maps based on self-driving technologies, according to the firms on Wednesday. Under the agreement, Naver Labs will be in charge of developing an advanced driver-assistance system and detailed maps, to contribute to the safety of SoCar drivers. An advanced driver-assistance system has safe

South Korea's corporate watchdog said Wednesday that it has decided to sue Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee as the country's largest conglomerate deliberately failed to submit related documents regarding affiliates to the authorities.According to the Fair Trade Commission, Samsung Group omitted two firms effectively under its wings from the list of its affiliates to the corporate watchdog in 2014. (Yonhap)The country's major business groups had been under tight mutual investment and loan

Samsung Electronics Co. on Wednesday unveiled a new mobile application processor optimized for artificial intelligence features that can be used on high-end smartphones and tablet PCs.A mobile AP combines central, graphics and video processing units, as well as a modem, into one and is used to run operating systems and applications. Accordingly, it is often referred to as the brain of mobile devices. Samsung Electronics Co.`s Exynos 9 (9820) mobile application processor (Yonhap)The South Korean

 Asiana Airlines Inc. has partnered with Barcelona-based Vueling Airlines S.A. to provide better services on routes to Europe, the company said Wednesday. (Yonhap)Under the partnership, Asiana will share 271 routes, mainly to Paris, Rome and countries near the Mediterranean Sea operated by the low-cost airline in Europe, the South Korean company said in a statement."The partnership will help boost travel demand from South Korea to European countries using flights on Vueling Airlines," a company

 Celltrion Healthcare Co., an affiliate of South Korea's leading biosimilar maker Celltrion Inc., will set up a sales unit in Europe to generate stable revenue from biosimilars, its CEO has said.Celltrion Healthcare, which handles Celltrion's overseas business, resorts mainly on local partners for overseas sales of Celltrion's biosimilars, or cheaper generic versions of the pricey patented drugs.  (Yonhap)"The company is preparing for direct sales of biosimilars in Europe," Celltrion Healthcare

Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday it will hold a developer conference in South Korea next week as part of its ongoing efforts to expand the ecosystem of its artificial intelligence platform.The company said it will host the Bixby Developer Day in Seoul on Tuesday. Samsung is expected to share the latest developments related to Bixby announced during the Samsung Developer Conference held in the United States last week.(Yonhap)Samsung opened the software development kit for Bixby during the S

Samsung Electronics Co. plans to deliver an official apology on the long-standing dispute surrounding its former workers suffering from diseases apparently related to the working environments at its factories, the mediation committee said Wednesday.The apology is part of the agreement reached between one of the world's leading makers of chips and Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry, a group of victims suffering from various illnesses such as leukemia afte

Low-cost carriers in South Korea are expected to continue their rapid growth and see international passenger traffic soar nearly 20 percent in 2019, a report said Wednesday.According to the report from the Korea Transport Institute, local budget carriers' combined international passenger traffic will likely shoot up 19.6 percent on-year to 30.4 million next year. (Yonhap)South Korean low-fare airlines have posted stellar performances in terms of international passenger traffic over the past five

Korean Air Lines Co., South Korea's flag carrier, said Tuesday its third-quarter net profit more than quadrupled compared to a year earlier on increased demand for long-haul routes.For the three months that ended on Sept. 30, net profit jumped to 257.25 billion won ($227 million) from 61.63 billion won a year earlier, Korean Air said in a statement.In May, Korean Air and Delta Air Lines, Inc. launched a joint business to allow Korean passengers to use multiple routes when traveling to the United

VMware, a US-based company that leads the world in virtualization and cloud-computing software, has partnered with South Korean telecommunications firm KT as part of efforts to address growing demand among client companies for “hybrid clouds,” or a multi-cloud environment.　VMware announced Tuesday that it plans to launch a computing solution called “VMware on KT Cloud” in Korea within this month. It will make VMware’s solutions compatible with KT’s public cloud services. The collaborative soluti