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Fescaro bucks industry norms to become Korea’s first full-stack auto cybersecurity provider
Fescaro, a Korean startup specializing in auto security, has defied the traditions of the original equipment manufacturer-heavy industry and is now looking to expand its all-around anti-hacking capabilities on the global stage. “A normal auto cybersecurity company is usually in a third-party position as it offers solutions defined and required by automakers and parts suppliers, which is regarded as a regular value chain,” said Hong Seok-min, CEO of Fescaro, in an interview at the startup’s offic
July 28, 2025 -
Why some Koreans considered iPhone ‘half-baked’ until it could replace their wallet and record calls
For more than a decade, a certain group of South Korean iPhone users passed around the same dry joke online: features like Apple Pay, call recording and transit card support would "only come to iPhone after unification with North Korea." The comparison wasn’t literal. It was a way of saying these features felt so delayed that they belonged to the realm of the near impossible. But as of now, that punchline has expired. On July 22, Apple and T-money officially launched support for Korea’s nationwi
July 28, 2025 -
Final week of US-Korea trade talks sees shipbuilding as key
Seoul is racing to finalize a tariff deal with Washington before the Aug. 1 deadline, as Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol prepares to meet US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday in a bid to avert a 25 percent tariff on Korean exports, including autos. According to the industry and government sources on Sunday, the meeting between Koo and Bessent has been rescheduled for Thursday, likely at the US Treasury Department. Their meeting was initially planned for Friday with Korea's Trade Minist
July 27, 2025 -
Samsung, LG tighten grip on high-end OLED market with iPhone 17 supply
South Korea’s top display makers Samsung Display and LG Display are cementing their dominance in the high-end OLED market by becoming the only firms to supply Apple’s upcoming iPhone 17 lineup with next-generation low-power panels known as low-temperature polycrystalline oxide OLEDs. According to industry sources Friday, Apple is set to adopt LTPO panels across the new iPhone 17 series, a move that further sidelines Chinese competitors like BOE, which continues to struggle with mass production d
July 25, 2025 -
SK hynix posts record quarterly profit on AI chip boom
SK hynix, the world's top memory chip-maker by revenue, hit an all-time high quarterly operating profit of 9.2 trillion won ($6.73 billion) in the April-June period, thanks to soaring demand for its high bandwidth memory chips, a core component in AI processing. Reporting the second quarter's earnings, the company said it aims to double HBM sales and shipments this year compared to 2024, as well as increase its capital expenditure beyond its initial plans for rising HBM demand starting in 2026.
July 24, 2025 -
SK Telecom joins state-led project to advance Korean AI models
SK Telecom announced Thursday that it has joined the Ministry of Science and ICT’s “AI Foundation Model” project, furthering its strategy to build independent artificial intelligence optimized for the Korean language. Since 2018, SKT has focused on developing large language models tailored to Korean. It launched KoBERT, Korea’s first deep-learning language model, in 2019, followed by KoGPT2 and KoBART, contributing to the advancement of Korea’s AI ecosystem. These models have supported both cust
July 24, 2025 -
LG aims for global AI elite with next-gen Exaone platform
LG AI Research unveiled on Tuesday its evolving Exaone ecosystem, introducing a series of its latest and newly developed Exaone-based AI models and services co-developed with global partners. At the “LG AI Talk Concert 2025” held at LG Sciencepark in Seoul, the institute showcased its lineup of AI innovations built on proprietary foundation models, including Exaone 4.0, Korea’s first hybrid AI model combining reasoning and generative capabilities and Exaone Path 2.0, a precision medical AI syste
July 22, 2025 -
Diverging prospects: Samsung eyes rebound, SK braces for HBM glut
As concerns over a potential supply glut in the high-bandwidth memory market for artificial intelligence semiconductors intensify, South Korea’s two memory chip giants — Samsung Electronics and SK hynix — are seeing sharply divergent stock performances. According to the Korea Exchange on Tuesday, so far in July, Samsung Electronics’ shares have surged 9.63 percent on the country’s main bourse, Kospi, outpacing the broader index's 2.6 percent rise. On the contrary, SK hynix’s shares have dropped
July 22, 2025 -
iPhones now work for transit rides in Korea
iPhone users in South Korea can now use their devices to pay fares on public transportation, as Apple Pay began supporting Tmoney’s prepaid transit card feature on Tuesday. By adding a Tmoney card to the "transit cards" section in Apple Wallet, users can tap to pay with their iPhone or Apple Watch to ride buses and the subway. Until now, iPhone users could not make contactless payments with their phones without a separate device or a physical credit card. Currently, only prepaid Tmoney cards are
July 22, 2025 -
SK Group chief, OpenAI CEO discuss AI cooperation in San Francisco meeting
Chey Tae-won, chairman of South Korea's SK Group, recently met with OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman in San Francisco to discuss potential collaboration on artificial intelligence infrastructure and broader strategic partnerships, according to industry sources Monday. Chey visited OpenAI's headquarters in San Francisco in early July and held talks with Altman, marking their first meeting since their last one in Seoul five months ago, the sources said. The two business leaders previously
July 21, 2025 -
LG AI Research taps machine learning experts as new heads
LG AI Research appointed Lee Hong-lak, vice president and chief scientist of AI, and Lim Woo-hyung, a senior researcher leading its Data Intelligence Lab, as the institute's new co-heads of research on Monday. The appointments follow the departure of former head Bae Kyung-hoon, who left the post after being appointed as Minister of Science and ICT in June. According to LG, Lee is a globally recognized scholar in machine learning and deep learning. Named among the world's top 10 AI researchers, h
July 21, 2025 -
Naver readies new social platform ThingsBook for US market
South Korean internet giant Naver is preparing to enter the crowded US social media market with a new platform, marking the company's boldest push yet into the world's most competitive digital market. The company said Monday it is developing the new user-generated content platform, named ThingsBook, through its US-based subsidiary U.Hub. But the date and the specifics are still under wraps. “We are developing a platform targeting the US market, but the launch date and the specific details are un
July 21, 2025 -
‘Korea must lead, not follow, in chips’
When Hwang Chul-joo set out to build front-end chipmaking equipment in 1993, he was met with strong skepticism, as Korea had just begun taking its first baby steps into the semiconductor industry. The idea of a homegrown firm developing chipmaking tools used in early-stage production sounded absurd to most. “Back then, people said Korea couldn’t even make a screw suitable for semiconductor equipment,” recalled Hwang, founder and CEO of Jusung Engineering, the country’s first-generation chipmakin
July 21, 2025 -
LG Uplus debuts financial AI model on AWS Bedrock
LG Uplus, one of the top three telecommunications providers in South Korea, said Sunday that it has launched its specialized small language model, ixi-Gen, on the Amazon Web Services Bedrock marketplace ― becoming the first Korean telecom company to bring an internally developed artificial intelligence language model to the global stage. Built on LG’s large language model Exaone, ixi-Gen has been optimized for financial applications through targeted learning on finance-specific data sets. Accord
July 20, 2025 -
SK chief says China is biggest AI threat in manufacturing
GYEONGJU, North Gyeongsang Province — South Korea needs to deepen data collaboration with Japan to counter China's growing dominance in AI manufacturing, according to Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “China is emerging as the biggest threat in AI in the manufacturing sector. In order for South Korea’s manufacturing to survive, it has to outperform,” Chey said during a session on AI at the KCCI’s annual summer forum in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang P
July 18, 2025