South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics is preparing for the “fourth industrial revolution” by mass producing faster and more efficient chips for smart and connected devices with always-on displays, cementing its leadership in the global memory market. 　As part of its latest move, the Korean chipmaker made around $1 billion worth of investments in its production facilities in Austin, Texas, as of this month. The facilities are operated for advanced system-on-chip products, which are supplie

Posco was named this week as the world’s most competitive steelmaker for the eighth consecutive year, the company said Tuesday, with the leading South Korean steel producer poised to take over the global steel industry with its self-developed premium product giga steel.   An image of Posco’s television ad for the world premium giga steel. The ad reads “giga steel is three times stronger than aluminum.” (Posco)Global steel research firm World Steel Dynamics announced Monday that Posco ranked as t

As a professor teaching international law I receive questions from people from time to time asking me whether UN Security Council resolutions are binding, that is whether they are ‘legally’ binding. The answer to that question is yes. I figure that those questions and perhaps the misperception of UNSC resolutions partly come from the title itself – “resolution.” In fact, many a resolution adopted domestically or internationally is not legally binding (unlike statutes or treaties), albeit politic

Initially conceived as a way to promote PyeongChang’s bid to host the Winter Olympics, the PyeongChang Music Festival and School has come a long way. When violinist Kang Hyo, a professor at the Juilliard School in New York, launched the summer classical music festival and school in 2004 in the mountains of Gangwon Province, it was called the Daegwallyeong Music Festival and School, or the Great Mountains Music Festival and School in English. Modeled after the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, US

Pinched between the ruling liberals and their conservative rivals dividing the parliament almost evenly, the centrist People‘s Party has been seeking to expand its leverage by acting as a tie-breaking power group.Contrary to its plans, however, the No. 3 party is now on the verge of losing its political momentum altogether over a manipulated election campaign scandal which may go all the way to the top.On Monday, a party member confessed to fabricating a key allegation concerning the first son o

President Moon Jae-in sets off to Washington on Wednesday for a crucial summit meeting with US President Donald Trump, scheduled for Friday. It will be Moon’s first summit, taking place 51 days into his term -- the earliest one-on-one meeting with a US president for any South Korean president. The South Korean presidential office has stated that the goal of the meeting is to build trust and friendship between the two leaders, and that the official agenda focuses on strengthening the alliance and

President Moon Jae-in on Tuesday tapped a reformist scholar with a civic activism background to lead the Ministry of Justice and push one of his top priorities -- judicial reform. Moon also named another law professor, Pak Un-jong, to lead the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission.From left are Park Sang-ki, Pak Un-jong and Lee Jin-gyu (Yonhap)Park Sang-ki, the justice minister nominee, is a professor of law at Yonsei University and serves as a co-chair of the nongovernmental organization

Director Lee Joon-ik’s latest film “Anarchist from Colony” is difficult to define. It centers on an unusual love story and a messy trial in Japanese courtrooms. It strives to be as accurate as possible in portraying a lesser-known, hard-to-fathom Joseon-era figure who spent over 20 years in a Japanese prison.　The man is Park Yeol, a self-proclaimed Korean anarchist who moved to Japan after the March First Movement of 1919 to further his education on the theories of anarchism and protest against

The world‘s current population of 7.6 billion will balloon to 9.8 billion in 2050, with India’s population to surpass China’s in just seven years, a UN report said.Nigeria will overtake the United States by 2050 to become the third most populous country in the world, according to the figures by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.At that rate, the global population will reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, it said.The population of India, which cu

Anyone with human feelings is outraged by North Korea’s murder of Otto Warmbier.The term “murder” is justified, although we don’t know exactly how this bright, adventurous student was brutalized after his arrest on a tourist visit to North Korea. No other word describes the crime of sentencing Otto to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster, then holding him for more than a year while he lay in a coma — and cutting off any diplomatic access to him.Yet note that, unlike