South Korean memory chipmaker SK hynix said Thursday it paid Intel an initial $7 billion tranche, completing the first phase to acquire the US tech giant’s NAND and SSD business. By absorbing Intel’s NAND and SSD business, SK hynix will rise as the No. 2 player in the global NAND market from its current fifth place. In the SSD segment, where Intel controls 29.6 percent, SK hynix can surpass Samsung Electronics with a combined market share of nearly 37 percent. NAND flash memory c

Hanwha Solutions Corp. a chemical and energy unit of South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, said Thursday it is acquiring the telecommunication module business of Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. in a bid to diversify its electronics component sector. Under the agreement signed between the two companies earlier in the day, Hanwha Solutions will take over the WiFi module and the high-speed fifth-generation (5G) milimeter wave (mmWave) antenna module divisions from the Samsung unit, it said in a p

South Korea’s move to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership next year will work in favor of Asia’s fourth-largest economy’s trade, experts from the US and the UK said. “We believe that South Korea will succeed in joining the CPTPP in the coming years,” Fei Xue, an Asia analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told The Korea Herald in an email interview earlier this month. “Inclusion in that regional trade agr

Paris Baguette operator SPC Group promoted its third-generation heir Hur Jin-soo as president of Paris Croissant, the group‘s de facto holding company, the firm announced Thursday. The recent promotion is in recognition of Hur’s contribution to raising Paris Baguette’s brand awareness in major foreign markets, explained SPC. He also led the bakery chain’s joint venture project in Indonesia and Cambodia this year. At its global branches, SPC appointed foreign executive

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who doubles as head of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, suggested redefining private-public partnerships in his New Year’s message released Thursday, calling for a more mutually beneficial mechanism that helps spur innovations across industries. Chey urged businesses to first change their mindsets, saying that gone are the days where making profits, creating jobs and paying more taxes were considered their key responsibilities. “Things h

Shinsegae and Seoul Auction are teaming up to expand operations in arts, NFTs and metaverse fields, South Korea’s largest art auction house said Thursday. The department store operator will purchase 28 billion-won ($23.6 million) of new shares issued by Seoul Auction, according to a DART announcement posted by the two firms on Wednesday.  When the acquisition is finalized on Jan. 6, Shinsegae will own a 4.82 percent stake in Seoul Auction. The firm is currently the largest art auc

Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday it sold four times as many foldable Galaxy Z series phones this year as last year, further solidifying its lead in the fast-growing new smartphone segment. While the South Korean tech giant did not disclose the exact tally, the total sales of the Galaxy Z series is believed to be around 8-9 nine million units this year, led by the popularity of the Galaxy Z Fold3, which folds in half like a book, and the clamshell-type Galaxy Z Flip3, among young tech-savv

Samsung Group on Thursday denied a local media report that it was in talks with Biogen to acquire the US biotech company in a deal worth 50 trillion won ($42.2 billion). Calling the report “groundless,” a Samsung spokesperson said no such talks were underway and declined to comment further. Samsung’s pharmaceutical manufacturing unit, Samsung Biologics, also denied the report in a regulatory filing released later in the day. Earlier in the day, the Korea Economic Daily re

Air Busan Co., a budget carrier unit of Asiana Airlines Inc., said Thursday it will open the Incheon-Vladivostok route in February to meet business travel demand.   Air Busan will offer flights to the Russian far eastern port city every two weeks from Feb. 5, the company said in a statement. "There is a growing outbound travel demand to Vladivostok for business purposes. Passenger travel demand is also expected to rise once the COVID-19 pandemic slows down," the statement

SK hynix Inc, South Korea's key memory chip maker, said Thursday it has closed the first phase of the transaction to acquire Intel's NAND and solid-state drive (SSD) business, and will name the newly established subsidiary Solidigm. The announcement came eight days after it received the merger clearance from China's State Administration for Market Regulation, the last remaining major regulatory hurdle for its $9 billion acquisition of Intel's SSD business and the Dalian NAND flash manufacturin

The Ministry of Science and ICT said Wednesday it will open up public Wi-Fi networks in case of network outages to help citizens gain access to basic telecommunication services. The decision came two months after KT Corp., a major South Korean telecom operator, suffered a nationwide network outage of services due to a routing error in the process of upgrading its equipment. The outage crippled businesses, including schools, restaurants and other facilities, for over an hour on Oct. 25. The go

South Korean companies acknowledge the importance of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) but not many are integrating ESG into their businesses. According to the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul on Wednesday, 70 percent of 300 domestic companies that participated in their survey on ESG integration responded that ESG is important. The main reason to why they consider ESG important was because it has a positive effect on business management performance with 42.9

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) said it will play a leading role in setting up international rules on creations and inventions by artificial intelligence next year. The KIPO, a member of the Intellectual Property Five (IP5), or a forum of the five largest intellectual property offices including those of the US, Europe, China and Japan, said it will also discuss among the IP5 ways to improve protection of trademarks and designs in the virtual world. “As the digital transfor

A local manufacturer and a distributor of a plastic baby bathtub that was previously recalled for containing high levels of toxic environmental hormones will have to pay compensation to thousands of customers. The Korea Consumer Agency said Wednesday it advised the baby tub’s manufacturer, Daehyeon Chemical, and its intermediate distributor, Kihyun Industries, to pay 50,000 won ($42) to each customer who used the product as compensation. While the tub was mostly sold at Daiso stores, t

Korea’s first furnace, touted as foundation of national growth, to turn into museum