A sense of relief came among market watchers and investors upon the long-awaited approval by China’s antitrust watchdog on Thursday for the sale of Toshiba’s memory business to a global consortium including the Korean chipmaker SK hynix. Industry watchers said the finalization of the deal is expected to enhance SK hynix’s position in the global memory market through potential technological partnerships with Toshiba.“We were informed by the consortium last night of the completion of the antitrust

LG Group, the fourth-largest conglomerate in South Korea, is speeding up its leadership inheritance process from the third generation of the owner family to the fourth generation, largely due to the incumbent chairman’s illness, the group said Thursday. Koo Kwang-mo, the only son of Chairman Koo Bon-moo was nominated as a board member at an emergency meeting of the directors early in the day after it was reported that the chairman had been hospitalized in critical condition.“The board held a mee

Gray G. Lee, head of the AI Center under Samsung Research, said Thursday the next flagship smartphone will adopt an upgraded artificial intelligence platform, Bixby 2.0. Lee told The Korea Herald that the upcoming flagship smartphone model in the second half of the year would feature the advanced Bixby platform, after a press conference to announce Samsung’s vision for AI. Samsung Research AI Center Head Gray G. Lee (By Song Su-hyun /The Korea Herald)According to his remarks, Bixby 2.0 will be u

Koo Bon-moo, chairman of South Korean conglomerate LG Group, has been hospitalized due to an illness he has been suffering, and he is reportedly in a critical condition, according to news reports Thursday morning.Koo, the third generation of the LG owner family, has been receiving treatment at Seoul National University Hospital for more than a year since he had surgery early last year. LG Chairman Koo Bon-moo (Yonhap)LG Group called an emergency meeting of the board of directors Thursday morning

South Korean tech titan Samsung Electronics seems to be speeding up the schedule for new flagship smartphones slated for launch later this year and 2019, according to industry sources on Wednesday. Local part suppliers for Samsung’s upcoming flagship phones deem that the top Korean smartphone maker is preparing to unveil their flagship phones slightly earlier than previous years for various reasons, including low sales of the latest Galaxy S9 series, according to multiple sources. According to t

“How can a control tower not have control?” An official at Samsung Electronics threw the question back to The Korea Herald when asked what Samsung executives and employees think of the latest comments by Kim Sang-jo, chairman of the Fair Trade Commission. Kim said in interviews with local media last week that Samsung needed a new control tower to coordinate all affiliates. He publicly urged Samsung heir apparent Lee Jae-yong to take action to overhaul the corporation’s governance structure acros

Tech Brunch breaks down how complex technologies work. -- Ed.To a question about what kinds of robots LG Electronics aims to build, Baek Seung-min, research fellow at the company’s Advanced Robotics Lab under the CTO Division, says, “Robots that understand and help people.”The country’s leading home appliance provider is on track to commercialize the first robot for daily lives at home in the second half of this year, and Baek highlights that the whole point of making these robots is to be suppo

South Korea’s LG Electronics on Monday introduced its latest robot vacuum cleaner that is “smarter and stronger” than predecessors, with an improved artificial intelligence platform with 3-D sensors.The newly launched LG Cordzero R9 ThinQ features LG’s AI platform Deep ThinQ whose navigation capabilities are reinforced with 3-D Dual Eye sensors. It is the first time the company equipped the AI platform to its robot cleaners for commercialization.  Models showcase LG's newest robot vacuum cleaner

SK Telecom said Monday it has completed development of packet core for the fifth-generation network. The packet core can be likened to toll gates on expressways, which funnels voice and data traffic from smartphones and other mobile devices to the internet. In cooperation with Samsung Electronics, SKT developed 1-terabit-class packet processing technology in November, which raised the packet traffic by tenfold, according to the firm. (Yonhap)The upcoming packet core will not only connect to the

The South Korean government has set a task force to handle the unfolding legal dispute with US private equity fund Elliott as the US firm is demanding a huge financial compensation from the government, according to related ministries on Friday. The task force of government officials from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and so forth is holding working-level meetings before the government starts negotiating with t

In response to re-emerging concerns about the possible fallout of Toshiba’s deal to sell its memory business to a global consortium by the end of June, trade and semiconductor industry experts in South Korea say China would approve the deal in the end, but after meticulously calculating its interests. Korean trade and semiconductor experts both cite China’s ‘Made in China 2025’ plan as a major reason for the Toshiba deal being delayed for several months. “By international trade customs and rules

SK Broadband, an internet service subsidiary of SK Telecom, said Thursday the company will be the first to commercialize the fastest internet service at 2.5 gigabits per second in the country. The SKT affiliate launched Giga Premium, a new internet service for commercial buildings and households, which is applied with the latest gigabit passive optical network technology. Known as G-PON, the technology does not require additional installations of cables to provide such fast internet speed, accor

Naver, the operator of South Korea’s largest portal website and search engine, announced on Wednesday a set of measures to prevent a repeat of the latest opinion-rigging scandal, including relinquishing its authority to edit news headlines and removal of a news list on the mobile front page. Naver CEO Han Seong-sook said, “Naver will no longer engage in editing news from the third quarter,” at a press conference held in southern Seoul. Such a decision has been made in the wake

이재용 삼성전자 부회장이 9일 일주일 간의 중국 일본 출장을 마치고 귀국했다.　이 부회장은 강서구 김포국제공항에서 기자와 만나 이번 출장의 성과와 관련해 “다음 기회에 말씀드리겠다”고 전했다. 　이 부회장은 지난 주 중국 선전 출장을 마친 후 4일 일본 오사카로 이동했다. 주말 동안 짧은 휴식을 취한 뒤 도쿄에서 KDDI와 NTT도코모 회장 등 일본의 주요 파트너사 수장들을 만났다. 　앞서 선전에서는 왕추안푸 BYD 회장을 비롯해 런정페이 화웨이 회장, 레이쥔 샤오미 회장, 션웨이 BBK(비보의 모기업) 최고경영자(CEO) 등을 차례로 만났다. 이 부회장이 해외 출장길에 오른 것은 지난 2월 초 항소심에서 집행유예로 풀려난 이후 3월 말 유럽과 캐나다를 잇달아 방문한 데 이어 두번째다. 2일 김기남 반도체부문장 사장, 이동훈 삼성디스플레이 대표이사 등 반도체 경영진을 대거 이끌고 간 이번 출장은 이 부회장의 '완벽한' 경영 복귀를 알리는 계기가 되었다.   　삼성 관계자에 따르면 귀

GIMPO -- Samsung Electronics heir and Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong on Wednesday returned from a weeklong trip to China and Japan after meeting the company’s major business partners there. In response to a question on what had been the major achievements of the latest trip, Lee told The Korea Herald that he would elaborate more later on.(Shot by Song Su-hyun/Edited by Lim Jeong-yeo)Lee met with chairmen and top officials of Japan’s mobile carriers KDDI and NTT Docomo in Tokyo earlier this week as p