Samsung Electronics has regained a spot on the Fortune list of the world’s 50 most admired companies, according to the survey published by the US economic magazine on Monday. The tech behemoth this year ranked 49th, becoming the only South Korean company to make the top 50 this year. Samsung Electronics this year received 7.56 points, slightly up from 7.50 a year earlier. Samsung Electronics marked top scores in five evaluation categories, including innovation, global competitiveness

Seoul boasts the world’s fastest 5G network services, according to a broadband speed test conducted with iPhone 12 devices. According to Ookla’s speed test data published last month, Seoul ranked first with a median download speed of 472.28 megabits per second, followed by Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia capital Riyadh, Sydney and Helsinki. Seoul had the fastest upload speed, reaching 49.09 megabits per second, the data also showed. Ookla’s report noted that

Naver gave out hefty stock bonuses to its 98 executives worth a combined 3.1 billion won ($2.78 million), the company said Tuesday, after the tech giant raked in record-high profits last year. CEO Han Seong-sook received 1,000 treasury stocks of the firm, amounting to 355 million won based on Thursday’s closing price of 355,000 won apiece. Chief Operating Officer Choi In-hyuk, Chief Communications Officer Chae Sun-joo and Chief Financial Officer Park Sang-jin received 700 shares each,

South Korea's ICT ministry said Tuesday it will invest 2.85 trillion won ($2.55 billion) until 2025 for the maintenance and replacement of aged and messy overhead electrical and telecommunications cables across the country. Over five years, the ministry plans to spend 1.4 trillion won for cable maintenance, while investing 1.45 trillion won to put them underground, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT. The move comes after the country spent 2.6 trillion won for cable maintenance in aro

South Korea said Tuesday it has teamed up with the mobile giant Kakao Corp. to provide local consumers with information on restaurants that have strictly followed sanitary guidelines to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. The service offers locations of restaurants that have employees wear protective masks at all times and provide separate utensils for communal dishes and pots, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Kakao operates South Korea's most popular mo

Over 66 percent of South Koreans used over-the-top (OTT) media, or video streaming services, last year amid the stay-at-home trend driven by the pandemic, a survey showed Tuesday. South Korea's OTT usage rate stood at 66.3 percent in 2020, compared with 52 percent the previous year, according to a survey of 6,029 people over the age of 13 by the country's media regulator, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC). YouTube was the most popular OTT service here, with its usage rate at 62.3 perce

All eyes are on what companies would be on the shopping list of Samsung Electronics, after the tech giant’s announcement last week captured the attention among industry officials and market watchers.　 Multiple chip-related companies have emerged as potential acquisition targets for the South Korean tech giant, according to market watchers. Dominant speculation suggests that Samsung is likely to be looking for a company that is related to the automotive chip business, or one that is corr

South Korean internet behemoth eyes entertainment platforms for global youth

SK Telecom said Monday it would begin sales of Facebook’s latest virtual reality device, the Oculus Quest 2, in South Korea, starting Tuesday. The Oculus Quest 2 will go on sale from 414,000 won ($370) at SK Telecom’s offline and online stores. The device is equipped with Qualcomm Technologies’ XR2 chipset and supports almost-4K resolution display. It also allows users to toggle between 72 hertz, 80 hertz and 90 hertz refresh rate modes. The standalone virtual reality head

SK hynix has completed its first fabrication line equipped with extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment for DRAM chips, the company said Monday. Named M16, the fab on its Icheon campus in Gyeonggi Province is the company’s largest. It has a building area of 57,000 square meters, equivalent to the size of eight soccer fields combined, and is 105 meters high, reaching the height of a 37-floor apartment building. SK hynix has injected 3.5 trillion won ($3.1 billion) and 3.34 million

SK Telecom Co., South Korea's largest wireless carrier, said Monday it will release Facebook Inc.'s latest virtual reality (VR) device, the Oculus Quest 2, as the telecom operator seeks to expand its presence in the local VR market. The mobile carrier said it will offer the device in South Korea on Tuesday as an extension of its partnership with the US social media giant in 2019. SK Telecom sold the company's previous Oculus Go device through last year. The Oculus Quest 2, which provides aroun

The number of subscribers to 5G network services in South Korea as of last year reached 11.85 million, according to government data, Sunday. Mobile data traffic using 5G networks too surged, due to the increasing number of 5G users, the government also reported. According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, the number of 5G subscribers in December increased 8.4 percent from a month earlier, continuing the upward trend in the previous month. The number of 5G users has increased by more than 90

DRAM and NAND flash are expected to be the two semiconductor products that outshine this year, a report showed Saturday, boding well for South Korean chipmakers that dominate the world's memory chip market. Sales growth for DRAM and NAND flash were projected to be 18 percent and 17 percent, respectively, making them the two sharpest-growing chips among the 33 integrated circuit products in 2021, according to the McClean Report released by market tracker IC Insights. DRAM, or dynamic random-a

The number of 5G subscribers in South Korea approached nearly 12 million last year since the launch of the latest mobile network in April 2019, data showed Friday. South Korea's 5G users stood at 11.85 million as of end-December last year, up over 900,000 from the previous month, according to the data from the Ministry of Science and ICT. The figure accounted for 16.8 percent of the total 70.5 million mobile network subscriptions in the country. The number of 5G users picked up in the second

South Korea's ICT ministry said Friday it will develop an artificial intelligence-powered translator for local video streaming services as part of its broader support plan for the fast-growing over-the-top (OTT) media industry. The Ministry of Science and ICT said it is pursuing the development of the AI-based translation technology as the country's OTT market experiences rapid growth and local OTT services begin eyeing overseas expansion with their Korean-language content. South Korea's OTT u