Lezhin Entertainment said Monday that it has joined hands with a local company to create dramas based on webtoons, or online comics.The operator of webtoon platform Lezhin Comics has signed a memorandum of understanding with SBS The Story Works, a drama maker, to produce TV shows based on popular online comics series. The logos of Lezhin Comics and SBS The Story Works　(Lezhin Entertainment)SBS Story Works has rolled out some hit Korean dramas including “Divorce Lawyer Is in Love” and “Ghost.”The

LG Electronics has launched an online retail store for its smart device line Friends, opening the platform to start-ups and developers to nurture an ecosystem for connected devices. The new website, dubbed LG Friends, is an online market where consumers can buy LG’s latest smart devices, including a removable smartphone camera, a portable speaker, a rolling toy robot, and a wireless headset. Developers attend LG Electronics’ conference in San Francisco, California, last Friday. (LGE)The Friends

A Samsung Electronics Galaxy S5 device remained intact after being left outdoors for nearly seven months, the Korean tech giant said Monday, proving the smartphone's water and dust resistance.According to the company, Bae Gyu-ryong, a 70-year-old user of the Galaxy S5 who works at a medical center in Chungju, about 150 km southeast of Seoul, lost his smartphone while working in a persimmon orchard near his rural farmhouse in September last year. As the device was in silent mode, Bae was not able

South Korea's top tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. will release a new budget smartphone in  China next month, industry sources said Sunday.The Galaxy C will be first rolled out in the Chinese market and later in the global market, they said.The Galaxy C will come with a 5.5-inch display and the price will be in the mid-200,000 won ($170) range.  The move apparently follows the release of similar budget phones by Chinese and Indian manufacturers, they added.Samsung has been making efforts to bo

KOREAN TELECOM WATCHDOG BEEFS UP TIES WITH U.S. COUNTERPART -- Tom Wheeler (left), chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, and Choi Sung-joon, chairman of South Korea’s telecommunications regulator Korea Communications Commission pose at a meeting held at the FCC last week. They discussed a range of issues including mergers between telecom companies and broadcasting firms, privacy laws, net neutrality and spectrum auctions. (KCC)

SK Telecom, South Korea’s leading wireless firm, said Sunday that it has struck a deal to export its pico projector, worth 300 million yen, to Japan.The telecom firm said that it would supply its projector, UO Smart Beam Laser, to Taisei Express of Japan for one year starting from this month. Kim Sung-han(right), head of SKT’s device planning division poses with Taisei Express CEO Hwang Kyong-ho after signing a supply deal in Hong Kong on Saturday. (SKT)The two partners reached the deal at the H

Competition in the global solid-state drive market is heating up as more players are rolling out the storage system built on technology that stacks cells vertically.An SSD is lighter and more compact than a conventional hard disk drive. It also boasts shorter booting time and faster reading and writing speeds than an HDD.  Intel’s solid-state drive product (Intel)Intel recently rolled out a new SSD lineup based on 3-D NAND flash memory in Seoul, home turf of Samsung Electronics, the largest SSD

South Korea's largest conglomerate Samsung Group reduced its number of employees by the largest margin among the country's top 30 business groups last year, data showed Saturday.As of end-2015, Samsung's total workforce came to 222,821 workers, down 5.8 percent or 13,636 workers from a year earlier, according to data from CEO Score, a market research firm.Samsung was the only one among the country's 30 largest conglomerates to have laid off more than 10,000 employees in 2015. Such a large cut wa

Shares of LG Display fell 6.7 percent Friday on a news report that Samsung Display had signed a deal with Apple to supply organic light-emitting diode displays for the next iPhones. The Samsung displays are expected to replace the liquid crystal display panels used in the current iPhones that are produced by LG Display. LG currently produces almost 40 percent of the iPhone display panels. Even though the Samsung-Apple deal had largely been expected, it seems unavoidable that it would have a nega

Samsung Display is considering building a separate production line to produce organic light-emitting diode displays exclusively for Apple’s iPhone, industry sources said Friday. The facility will start operation within the second quarter of this year to have a production capacity of 120,000 panels per month.The plan comes after a news report that the display-making unit of Samsung Electronics recently signed a contract with Apple to supply an annual 100 million OLED panels from the second quarte

South Korea will host the Intellectual Property Business Congress, an annual forum for the global intellectual property industry, for the first time at JW Marriott Seoul Hotel in Seoul on Friday.Around 200 IP experts, patent agency officials and corporate executives will flock to the event, dubbed IPBC Korea, to discuss current issues and challenges facing the IP segment, such as how to develop strategies to boost the value of IP.Some of the speakers for the event include IBM’s Asia-Pacific IP l

Tech giant Samsung Electronics’ mobile security solution KNOX has received the highest score among security solutions for mobile operating systems in a series of tests, surpassing rivals including Apple.Samsung received the highest “strong,” rating in market research firm Gartner’s annual report released last week. It assesses 12 mobile security solutions across more than 20 categories including encryption management, authentication methods, and OS updates. A Galaxy S7 user initiates Samsung Ele

SAMSUNG QUANTUM-DOT TV DEBUTS IN U.S. -- Visitors look at Samsung Electronics’ second-generation SUHD TVs at the launch event held Tuesday at the company’s Marketing Center of Excellence in New York. Based on Samsung’s quantum-dot technology, the new models offer more accurate and vibrant picture quality compared to traditional liquid crystal display TVs. (Samsung Electronics)

Author of ‘The Knockoff Economy’ calls Apple’s patent claim ‘just wrong’

SK hynix, the world’s third-largest chipmaker by sales, is expected to see its operating profit more than halve during the first three months of this year, according to analyst reports Wednesday.Korean investment firms predicted that the Korean chip company’s first quarter operating profit would be in a range of 512 billion won ($446 million) to 579 billion won. SK hynix’s NAND Flash memory chip. (SK hynix)The estimates are up to 60 percent lower than the company’s operating profit in the first