Top executives of Naver and Nvidia met in the US last week and their key agenda was securing “sovereign AI.” Sovereign AI refers to a nation’s capabilities to autonomously develop and produce artificial intelligence models using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business network. Tech firms have put greater value on the concept as it allows AI models to be more advanced by incorporating cultures, languages and values specific to each region. “Naver and Nvidia wi

Technology July 3, 2024

Unionized workers of Samsung Electronics have said they will stage a three-day walkout beginning July 8, as their negotiations with management over wages and working conditions have so far failed. The National Samsung Electronics Union, the largest among multiple Samsung Electronics unions with some 28,400 workers, or 22 percent of the total workforce, announced the decision on Monday evening livestreaming on YouTube. “Any further peaceful strike is meaningless,” said Son Woo-mok, pr

Industry July 2, 2024

SK On, the battery unit of South Korean chip-to-construction conglomerate SK Group, said Monday it will freeze the annual pay of all executive-level officials until it turns to profit, declaring emergency management amid its sluggish performance. The company decided to drastically revamp all working processes, including resource distribution, to improve operational efficiency in response to the changing industry environment as global electric vehicle markets are in a stagnation phase, known as t

Industry July 1, 2024

SK Group said Sunday that it will secure 80 trillion won ($57.9 billion) by 2026 to accelerate its push for two growth drivers: chips and artificial intelligence. SK hynix, its chipmaking unit, alone plans to invest 103 trillion won by 2028, with 80 percent of the new funding focusing on AI chips, including high-bandwidth memory, a burgeoning area where the chip giant has secured an earlier edge. Telecom carrier SK Telecom and internet service provider SK Broadband will also invest a combined 3.

Industry June 30, 2024

LG Innotek said Thursday that it has met nearly 61 percent of its renewable energy transition goals just a year since it joined the RE100 corporate initiative in July 2022. According to its sustainability report, it converted 60.9 percent of its energy consumption to renewable energy last year, a significant increase from 22.1 percent in 2022. LG Innotek explained that this resulted in about 267,000 tons of reduction in carbon emissions, equivalent to that of around 40 million 30-year-old pine t

Industry June 30, 2024

South Korean-owned sportswear brand Fila Holdings on Thursday released its latest annual sustainability report, “Your Fila Impact -- Fila Integrated Report 2023,” demonstrating its commitment to sustainability management. This is the fifth publication of its kind since Fila established its “Your Fila Impact 2025” sustainability goal in 2019. Last year, the company adopted its sustainability theme: "Change the game: From deuce to victory." In the environmental

Industry June 27, 2024

Medit, a leading provider of dental 3D scanners and digital dentistry solutions owned by private equity fund MBK Partners, said Thursday that it appointed North American business chief Han Ryu as its new CEO. “I am truly honored to lead Medit as CEO. Medit's open innovation model and unwavering passion for care improvement perfectly align with my vision. We will accelerate the digital dental revolution with a customer-centric approach,” Ryu said upon his appointment. Ryu has ove

Industry June 27, 2024

SK Square, the investment arm of SK Group, is preparing for a leadership change as part of a drastic operational restructuring across SK companies, according to industry sources on Wednesday. The company plans to hold a board meeting in the coming weeks to appoint a new CEO following its current chief Park Sung-ha’s pending departure. Han Myung-jin, former chief strategy officer of SK Telecom, is cited as one of the CEO candidates, sources said. Park, who took office in March last year, ha

Industry June 26, 2024

LG Uplus, one of the top three telecommunications providers in South Korea, launched its self-developed generative artificial intelligence model ixi-GEN on Tuesday. Ixi-Gen is a small language model that learned LG Uplus’ communication and platform data based on LG AI Research Institute’s Exaone, a multimodal AI model capable of bilingual language processing and the bidirectional generation of language and images, developed in 2021. It can be used quickly and cost-effectively and mit

Technology June 25, 2024

South Korea's recent attempt to launch the fourth telecom carrier -- the eighth of its kind -- fell through again, raising skepticism about the government's preparedness and the feasibility of the plan itself. The Ministry of Science and ICT earlier this month decided to cancel the license of Stage X as the fourth mobile carrier, citing a lack of trust in its capitalization plan. Amid the long-standing dominance of three telecom carriers -- SK Telecom, KT Corp. and LG Uplus, the govern

Technology June 23, 2024

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won will embark on a business trip Saturday to the US to meet with key figures in artificial intelligence and semiconductors fields for future business opportunities, the group said Friday. Chey’s upcoming trip comes about two months after he met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in San Jose in April. Key executives at SK’s AI and chip businesses, including SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-sang and SK hynix President Kim Joo-sun, will accompany the chairman. SK said Che

Industry June 21, 2024

Samsung Electronics has been enhancing the reach of its proprietary Tizen operating system by incorporating artificial intelligence capabilities. According to Samsung Newsroom on Thursday, Tizen has been deployed in approximately 270 million units of Samsung smart TVs released as of the end of last year. Considering that it was installed in about 50 million units in 2015, it recorded a growth rate of about 440 percent. “Samsung Tizen is preparing for another leap forward by evolving into

Technology June 20, 2024

SK Telecom, South Korea's largest wireless carrier by membership, on Wednesday unveiled the official name of its quantum alliance: X Quantum. In March, SK Telecom allied with six other companies -- Nokia, SOS Lab, Xgate, Wooriro, KCS and IDQ Korea -- to promote developments in the quantum ecosystem through exploring joint marketing and business opportunities. Regarding X Quantum, SK Telecom explained that it encompasses the identity of the “quantum frontier,” which plays a role

Technology June 19, 2024

LG Electronics said Wednesday it has teamed up with ChargePoint, a leading provider of networked charging solutions for electric vehicles, to leverage their respective strengths for future innovations in EV charging. The two sides recently signed a memorandum of understanding for commercial EV charging in the US. Through the agreement, LG augments its existing client base by securing ChargePoint, which possesses an extensive portfolio of charging solutions, as a customer. ChargePoint has more th

Industry June 19, 2024

Naver Webtoon, known as Webtoon Entertainment in the US, is seeking to be listed on the Nasdaq market, where it expects to have a corporate value of up to $2.67 billion. Webtoon Entertainment submitted a registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for its upcoming initial public offering on Monday. The company aims to raise as much as $315 million by issuing 15 million common shares at an expected price range of $18 to $21 per share, the statement showed. Once listed, the

Industry June 18, 2024