Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong will likely soon visit Japan to meet with major business partners, according to the conglomerate heir on Friday. Lee had just returned to Seoul after meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi on Tuesday and visiting Samsung’s manufacturing facilities in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday. He didn’t comment on reporters’ questions at Gimpo Airport upon arrival on his response to the Vietnamese prime minister&rsq

SK hynix Inc.'s acquisition of Intel Corp.'s NAND memory business will bring positive results to the company, analysts here said Friday, as it can beef up profitability and technological prowess in the sector. South Korea's No. 2 chipmaker on Tuesday announced a 10.3 trillion-won ($9 billion) deal to buy Intel's non-volatile memory unit that includes its solid state drive (SSD) business and a NAND flash chip plant in Dalian, China. Local analysts said the deal will help SK hynix achieve econo

South Korea's Hyundai Robotics Co. said Friday it has joined hands with fried chicken franchise KFC Korea Co. to automate the chicken cooking process. Under the preliminary deal with KFC Korea, Hyundai Robotics, a unit of global shipbuilding giant Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings Co. (HHIH), will develop the automation process to cook chickens by using robots. KFC Korea will provide its stores and cooking know-how under the deal. Food Tech applying high-end technologies to the food industr

Samsung Electronics has collaborated with K-pop stars BTS on the opening of a pop-up store for fans at Garosugil in southern Seoul, the company said Friday. The Serif, Samsung’s flagship lifestyle TV model, is installed at the three-floor store, “BTS Pop-Up: Map of Soul,” to display music videos of the idol group. Four Serif TVs could be spotted on each floor. On the second floor of the store, Samsung has installed a 1,200-nit HDR LED display to better support the offl

LG Electronics Inc. said Friday it has opened a showroom for its luxury built-in kitchen appliance brand in Europe to better expand its presence there. The first European showroom of LG's Signature Kitchen Suite was opened in Milan, Italy, according to the company. The 1,100-square-meter facility is near the Brera District of Milan, a famous area for fashion lovers with its Design Week event. It is the third Signature Kitchen Suite showroom from LG. The other two are in South Korea and the U

Percentage of apartment purchasers in Seoul who are in their 30s

LG Display on Thursday posted third-quarter revenue of 6.7 trillion won ($5.9 billion) and an operating profit of 164.4 billion won, marking the company’s first profit in seven quarters. The revenue was a 27 percent increase from the previous quarter. Net profit was 11.1 billion won. Panels for such information technology devices as computers laptops and tablets accounted for 43 percent of the revenue, with TVs at 28 percent and mobile and others at 29 percent. In a conference call th

Consumer goods company LG Household & Health Care posted 2.7 trillion won ($2.38 billion) in quarterly revenue, its best-ever earnings for the third-quarter period. While its revenue was up 5.4 percent compared to the same time last year, the company also posted a net profit of 231.7 billion won, up 6.7 percent from a year ago and an operating profit of 327.6 billion won, up 5.1 percent, according to its regulatory filing Thursday. Despite uncertainties stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic,

The head of South Korea's fair trade watchdog said Thursday her agency will review one of two ongoing probes into Google Inc.'s market competition violations. Since 2016, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has been investigating Google over allegations that it obstructed local smartphone makers from using operating systems from other rivals. It is also investigating whether Google forced mobile game applications to be only released on its Play store. "The KFTC is currently conductin

Samsung SDS announced Thursday that the company had won both foreign and local competitions designed to test natural language processing capabilities. Samsung SDS’ artificial intelligence model won a competition associated with HotpotQA -- a dataset developed by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, and Google AI. In Korea, the company has won competitions related to the Korean Question Answering Dataset, in whi

LG Electronics on Thursday announced a new lineup of tailorable home appliances under the brand Objet, joining the growing market for customizable consumer electronics. The company unveiled 11 new products, including a convertible refrigerator, dishwasher, lightwave oven, water purifier, washing machine and clothes care machine. Those products under LG Objet Collection offer a number of customizable options, letting consumers choose colors, materials and arrangements of functions to make

LG CNS said Thursday that the company would provide artificial intelligence education to around 4,000 students here. The company said it has increased the number of students who can take its education program this year by 60 percent compared to last year. In 2019, the company had some 2,500 students complete its program. Starting this year, LG CNS has been holding classes online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 1,000 students have finished the program, and the company will invite 3,000 m

McDonald’s Korea said Thursday it has replaced all the oil used in cooking its food with sunflower oil, a first in the quick service restaurant industry. The burger chain said it introduced sunflower oil to all of its burger outlets, as it is a healthier ingredient that is lower in trans fats than the vegetable oils the company was using before. The move comes as part of the plan the company announced earlier this month to promote sustainable growth for society and the environment. Sunf

Nongshim, a South Korean food company, said Thursday it kicked off its annual fostering program to select and support food tech startups dubbed Nongshim Techup+. This year’s theme is “new lifestyle in the post-COVID-19 era,” and Nongshim is looking for food tech startups that present creative products or services in areas such as non-contact business, healthcare and all other economic activities done at home, the company explained. Nongshim said it will evaluate applicants

South Korean consumers are more worried about COVID-19 than consumers anywhere else in the world, and are also the biggest users of online food services, according to a survey by customer data analysis firm Dunnhumby. In a survey report released Thursday, titled “Impact COVID-19 has had on customer attitudes and behavior,” Korea was identified as the country with the most worried consumers concerning the COVID-19 outbreak, with respondents saying their personal finances had weakene