Samsung Heavy Industries Co. has signed a deal to lease its drill ship to Italian oilfield services company Saipem for two years, the shipbuilder said Tuesday. The deal to be effective from November 2021 to August 2023 has an option for Saipem to purchase the leased drill ship, it added. But the company did not reveal the value of the deal. The drill ship is one of two drill ships that Swiss-based offshore driller Transocean Ltd. relinquished without specifying the reason in September 2019.

BUSAN -- A court sentenced former Busan Mayor Oh Keo-don to three years in prison Tuesday for sexually assaulting female employees at work, broadening the interpretation of injury to include psychological trauma. The Busan District Court convicted him of sexually assaulting two female employees using his power and injuring one of them. He was arrested in court. "This is a workplace sexual assault case in which the accused used his superior position" for his crime, Judge Ryu Seung-woo

LG Electronics Inc. said Tuesday its OLED TVs now support an advanced video processing technology for gamers at 4K resolution with 120Hz refresh rate as the South Korean tech giant tries to beef up its presence in the gaming community. Through a software update, LG said its 2021 OLED TV models, including the G1 and C1, are compatible with Dolby Vision Gaming at 4K, 120Hz, becoming the industry's first TV products to support the solution in such picture settings. Previously, LG's TV supported

South Korea is currently facing 216 trade barriers from 28 countries, data showed Tuesday, amid the looming protectionism around the globe. The figure includes 11 additional trade barriers imposed against South Korea in the first half of 2021, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Of the additional regulations, anti-dumping tariffs accounted for eight and safeguard measures took up three. The steel and metal sectors were among major victims, taking up 1

Samsung SDS Co., an IT service unit of Samsung Group, on Tuesday said it has signed a partnership with US-based software firm ServiceNow Inc. to expand cloud-based businesses. Under the deal with ServiceNow, Samsung SDS will utilize its IT service management solutions to help enterprise customers' digital transformation efforts. The two also agreed to join forces to develop technologies in the field of artificial intelligence and natural language understanding to seek growth opportunities.

North Korea's official newspaper said Tuesday that the site for riverside apartments now under construction in Pyongyang is where a special residence was once located for late state founder Kim Il-sung. In March, North Korea unveiled a plan to build around 800 "terraced apartments" along the Pothong River running through Pyongyang as "gifts" to "working people, including labor innovators and persons of distinguished services in all sectors, scientists, educators and wri

A military general has tested positive for the new coronavirus, marking the first such case among the ranks, officials said Tuesday. The general, based in Seongnam, south of Seoul, was confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 after developing symptoms, according to the defense ministry. On the same day, another soldier, based in the border county of Cheorwon, was found to be infected while away from his base during a vacation before discharge. The latest cases raised the total number of infecti

Mandatory outdoor mask rules for those who have received their first shots of COVID-19 vaccines could be reintroduced if the country sees a rise in new coronavirus variant cases, the prime minister said Tuesday. Starting Thursday, South Korea plans to allow people administered with their first vaccine doses to travel outdoors without masks, as part of the government's new COVID-19 guidelines emphasizing incentives for vaccinated people. Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, however, stated that the gov

Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong has entered self-isolation after one of the passengers of a flight he took to return home from a Southeast Asian trip tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday. Chung arrived home Saturday from Indonesia, the last leg of his weeklong visit to three Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam and Singapore. On Monday, he was informed by the health authorities that one of the flight's passengers tested positive and that he was required to self-

South Korea's daily new virus cases remained in the 500s for the second day in a row Tuesday on fewer tests, but the loosened vigilance against the pandemic may trigger a further rise in new infections amid a steady increase in cases of COVID-19 variants. The country reported 595 more COVID-19 cases, including 560 local infections, raising the total caseload to 156,167, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said. The latest figure was up 94 from the previous day. The country a

Kia Corp., South Korea's No. 2 automaker, will begin an in-house COVID-19 vaccination program for its workers next month as part of antivirus measures for its factories, company officials said Tuesday. Kia plans to start inoculating employees with Moderna shots at in-house clinics of its plants in Gwangmyeong, Hwaseong and Jeonju on July 30, a company spokesperson said. The automaker will accept reservations from its 23,000 employees working at production lines, the spokesperson said. Kia

SK Telecom Co., South Korea's largest mobile carrier, said Tuesday it has teamed up with US call center technology company Genesys to launch a contact center service powered by artificial intelligence (AI). AI call centers have recently risen in popularity as they can reduce tasks handled by traditional call center agents by using speech recognition and natural language processing technology to respond to simple and repetitive user queries. SK Telecom said it has partnered with Genesys, which

Samsung Electronics Co. on Tuesday unveiled its new smartwatch interface that will run on the upcoming unified wearable operating system (OS) with Google as the South Korean tech giant eyes to expand its presence in the wearable device market. Samsung introduced One UI Watch at its virtual session of this year's Mobile World Congress, saying the new interface aims to deliver a more connected experience between the Galaxy Watch and smartphones. One UI Watch will be available for new OS jointl

Superband BTS retained the top spot on Billboard's main singles chart for the fifth straight week with its upbeat summer number "Butter," once again outpacing the group's chart record. "Butter" holds at No. 1 with 12.4 million US streams and 128,400 downloads sold (up 15 percent) in the week ending June 24. It also attracted 27.6 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 6 percent) in the week ending June 27," Billboard said Monday (US time) on its Twitter account.

South Korean airlines called on the government Tuesday to implement a travel bubble as early as possible and to expand it to individual overseas tourists. The request was made at a meeting between Vice Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Kim Jeong-base and tourism industry people, which was organized by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. A travel bubble refers to a quarantine-free travel partnership between two or more cities or countries with similar levels of COVID-19 cases. South