Google pushes again for map exports as Korea weighs security risks

US IT giant Google has expressed its willingness to purchase satellite images of South Korea with sensitive areas blurred out, in a move aimed at addressing national security concerns as the government deliberates on whether to allow the export of high-precision map data. In a blog post published Tuesday, Google emphasized its mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” pointing to Google Maps as one of its flagship products designed to help users

Aug. 5, 2025

Samsung launches InnoX Lab to lead next-gen AI innovation

Samsung Electronics has established a new organization dedicated to advancing humanoid robots, digital twin solutions and physical artificial intelligence technologies as part of its broader strategy to lead in the era of AI. According to industry sources on Tuesday, the tech giant's device experience division has launched InnoX Lab. Internally announced to employees on Monday, the lab is tasked with accelerating the company’s response to emerging megascale challenges and bold strategic initiati

Aug. 5, 2025

LG, SKT, Naver among five selected for Korea’s sovereign AI push

The Ministry of Science and ICT on Monday announced the final selection of five teams to lead South Korea’s ambitious “sovereign AI foundation model” project, aimed at building homegrown, high-performance artificial intelligence models. The selected teams are Naver Cloud, Upstage, SK Telecom, NC AI and LG AI Research. Each will be granted the titles of “K-AI model” and “K-AI company,” the ministry said. The final selection followed an evaluation process that assessed each consortium’s technologi

Aug. 4, 2025

LG deepens bio push with US anticancer biotech

LG Group is accelerating its push into the biohealth sector by investing in Strand Therapeutics, a US-based developer of messenger RNA-based cancer therapies. LG recently participated as a Series B investor in Strand Therapeutics through its venture capital arm, LG Technology Ventures, according to industry sources Sunday. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the biopharma firm was founded in 2017 by a group of synthetic biologists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The firm s

Aug. 3, 2025

Seoul draws red line: Why high-precision map data excluded from US trade deal

A key issue pushed by US tech giants Google and Apple ― the export of South Korea’s high-precision map data ― was notably excluded from last week’s Korea-US tariff negotiations, underscoring Seoul’s firm stance that its national security is not up a bargaining chip. According to industry sources and the presidential office on Sunday, the Korea-US trade discussions on Thursday focused largely on conventional tariff and commerce issues. The topic of high-precision map data exports, previously flag

Aug. 3, 2025

After tariff deal reprieve, Samsung braces for new trade rules

Samsung Electronics said Thursday it is closely monitoring the upcoming decision by the US Department of Commerce regarding semiconductor-related trade regulations, despite an easing in uncertainty following tariff negotiations between South Korea and the US on the same day. During a conference call following its second-quarter earnings announcement, the tech giant said the decision expected in mid-August pertains to the Section 232 investigation under the US Trade Expansion Act, which covers se

July 31, 2025

Will US' push undermine Korea’s AI sovereignty drive?

As US President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week unveiling an “AI action plan” to maintain America’s dominance in artificial intelligence, concerns are rising that the move could undermine South Korea’s ambitions to build its sovereign AI ecosystem. According to industry sources on Wednesday, the Trump administration’s plan, signed on July 23, triggered a rapid response from China, which announced its own global AI governance initiative just three days later. At the heart of the

July 30, 2025

LG Innotek to invest $50m in Aeva as part of strategic LiDAR partnership

Korean electronics parts maker LG Innotek said Tuesday that it has signed a strategic partnership with US-based Aeva to supply its next-generation ultra-slim, long-range 4D LiDAR modules, the light detection and ranging sensors that are crucial for self-driving vehicles. Aeva, renowned for its frequency modulated continuous wave LiDAR technology, was the first company in the world to commercialize 4D LiDAR systems capable of long-range object sensing. Since beginning mass production in 2022, the

July 29, 2025

Korea's Enhans makes global top 3 in AI agent benchmark

Enhans, a South Korean startup specializing in vertical commerce AI agents, said Tuesday that its artificial intelligence model, ACT-1, ranked third in the global benchmark for web-based AI agents, Online Mind2Web. The model placed just behind global tech giants OpenAI and Anthropic. The Online Mind2Web benchmark assesses AI agents on their ability to perform complex tasks on the web, emulating human behavior. The evaluation covers 300 real-world tasks across 136 actively operating websites, ass

July 29, 2025

SK Telecom, Krafton debut open-source AI models for math, code

SK Telecom, Korea's largest wireless carrier in terms of subscribers, and gaming giant Krafton have unveiled three open-source language models optimized for inference tasks such as mathematics and code generation, the companies said on Monday. The newly released models are lightweight language models tailored to problem-solving and programming tasks. Developed through collaboration, the models boasting 7 billion parameters incorporate a proprietary learning technique crafted by Krafton to improv

July 28, 2025