Two leading automakers collaborate to open new market for hydrogen-powered cars beyond pure electric vehicles

South Korea was the world’s third-largest market for online video games and the fourth-largest for mobile games last year, according to data provided by market research firm Euromonitor International on Wednesday.Korea’s online video game market was valued at $1.69 billion in 2017, marking an on-year growth of 23.2 percent. The country’s mobile game market was valued at $2.34 billion in the same year, up 36 percent from the previous year.China ($11.9 billion) and the US ($2.24 billion) were the

KAIST, South Korea’s leading science and technology research university, will host a forum in Seoul on Thursday to discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence technology development as well as policymaking around the world. Titled “Taming Artificial Intelligence: Engineering, Ethics and Policy,” the forum will invite some of the world’s leading AI researchers, including those who recently made headlines for announcing a boycott of KAIST over its alleged contribution to developing autonomous “k

SK Telecom’s board of directors decided to split money-losing subsidiary SK Planet into an e-commerce and a data tech firm as part of strategies to boost the online shopping business, it said Tuesday. The parent company also said it has helped finance 500 billion won ($448 million) for SK Planet’s e-commerce platform 11Street with a goal of developing the platform as the Korean version of Amazon. The mobile carrier attracted the investment from various investors including private equity H&Q Kore

South Korea’s three mobile operators are speeding up their plans to commercialize fifth-generation network services after the completion of the auction for 5G frequency bands. According to the plans, the mobile carriers are preparing to select equipment vendors in the third quarter and start building 5G stations in the fourth quarter. “Some are expecting the vendor selection to be completed by early July,” said an industry official. “Now with the frequency auction being completed, each company w

DISCUSSING GAME EXPORTS -- Business meetings are held at the “2018 ITS GAME” game industry trade show, which kicked off at Coex in Seoul on Tuesday. In its ninth edition, the event has the participation of 110 game publishers and buyers from 14 countries including the US and China. Yonhap

The World Health Organization has recognized game addiction as a mental disorder in its latest version of the revised 11th International Classification of Diseases released Monday, drawing backlash from the gaming industry and medical professionals worldwide, including Korea’s.Though technically a draft, the ICD-11 in its present state is the final copy that will be considered for official endorsement upon discussion by the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, in May 2019.The I

Instagram’s growing popularity driven by women in 30s with money, social status, experts say

South Korean mobile carriers on Monday secured frequency spectrums for the upcoming fifth-generation network in an auction at a total of 3.6 trillion won ($3.26 billion), the Ministry of Science and ICT said. The auction ended on its second day, and the total winning price was higher than the government’s asking price of 3.3 trillion won.  An official at the Ministry of Science and ICT speaks at a press conference about the result of 5th-generation network auction at the Government Complex Gwach

Tech titan expected to mull measures at upcoming global strategy meetings

The South Korean branch of US tech giant Microsoft Corp. released a report on Monday which claimed cyber attacks caused direct and indirect losses of $72 billion last year for local companies.The report announced by Microsoft Korea and Frost & Sullivan claimed that around 90 percent of such losses were indirect fallouts brought on by the loss of clients and damage to companies' reputations.Microsoft said around 29 percent of South Korean firms surveyed were not aware of cyber attacks, and claime

South Korean fintech startup Viva Republic, the maker of money transfer app Toss, said Monday that it has newly raised $40 million in funding from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and venture investor Sequoia China. The deal marks the first investment in a Korean startup by GIG and Sequoia China. It also brings Viva Republica’s total investment raised to $116 million, the company said. Launched in 2015, Toss is best known as a peer-to-peer money transfer app that allows users to wire money

In South Korea, Naver dominates the internet technology space. Here, the Naver portal website serves as a mainstream hub for just about every web-based activity, ranging from searches and shopping to blogs, news and maps.　However, Naver is outpaced by its foreign rival Google in one key area — videos. Google-owned YouTube is currently Korea’s longest-used app and the primary tool used to share and watch online videos, according to Seoul-based app analytics firm WiseApp. 　With YouTube’s presence

Samsung Electronics has reportedly been ordered to pay $400 million to the licensing arm of South Korea’s top science and research university KAIST over infringing a patent related to key semiconductor technology.　A US federal jury in Texas ruled that the Korean tech giant infringed KAIST’s patent related FinFet -- a key transistor technology used to produce processors for mobile phones -- and should pay a fine, according to a Bloomberg report Saturday.Chipmakers Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries wer

Global shipments of smartphones are expected to grow 1.4 percent in 2018 compared to the year before, with numbers likely to rise at a faster clip from 2019 onwards once the real-world 5G network is introduced, a report by an industry consulting firm showed Sunday.According to Strategy Analytics, total smartphone shipments are expected to reach a little over 1.49 billion units, up from 1.47 billion in 2017. The poor showing is a repeat of numbers for 2016 and 2017 when annual growth was tallied