Early this month, SK Planet, owned by the nation’s largest telecom carrier SK Telecom, filed a lawsuit against Loc & All, the operator of navigation app Kimgisa, for using its map information without permission. SK Planet, which owns Korea’s most used navigation app T-Map, had offered the map information to Loc & All under a contract since 2011. But the company claimed that Kimgisa continued using the information even after the contract expired in June. “We found hundreds of our watermarks on Ki

Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its latest Exynos 8 Octa 8890 chipset that will be installed in its next Galaxy smartphone lineup, tentatively called the Galaxy S7, next year. The new chip is the company’s first premium one-chip solution that integrates modem and radio frequency technology into a single chip. Qualcomm is the market leader in such chips.  The one-chip solution boasts better performance at lower energy consumption than the alternatives. But few companies make chips of thi

South Korea’s No. 1 mobile carrier SK Telecom said Monday that it would acquire CJ Hellovision, the Internet television service affiliate of CJ Group, with aims to strengthen its dominance in media platform services. The telecom company said it will acquire a 30 percent stake in CJ Hellovision owned by CJ O Shopping, the group’s home-shopping unit, for 500 billion won ($438 million) immediately. The remaining 23.9 percent stake will be acquired in a call option deal also for 500 billion won thre

Lotte Group’s decision to acquire chemicals businesses from Samsung Group, which was announced Friday, is expected to help the food and retail giant extend its business portfolio. And more importantly the 3 trillion won ($2.6 billion) pricey deal put a renewed spotlight on business capabilities of chairman Shin Dong-bin, who has recently been engulfed in an escalating family feud over the group’s ownership. Lotte said it would acquire 31.5 percent of shares in Samsung Fine Chemicals, Samsung’s l

LG Chem said Sunday it had secured a combined $8 million in new orders supplying water purification filters for eight seawater desalination projects among Egypt, Israel, Spain, Malta and Mexico. The company said it would produce some 17,000 reverse osmosis filters at its plant in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, by the end of next year, with the first batch shipped on Oct. 30.Reverse osmosis is a water purification technology that uses a semipermeable membrane to remove larger particles fro

Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled plans to boost investor dividends through an 11.3 trillion won ($10 billion) share buyback after reporting its first on-year profit growth in two years.  Samsung said it would cancel all shares purchased through the buyback, its biggest to date, and planned to give shareholders 30-50 percent of its free cash flow over the next three years, mostly through dividends. The plans come after investors have increasingly requested bigger payouts from the Korean t

LG Electronics on Wednesday launched new air care brand “PuriCare” in a renewed push to expand its air purifier and humidifier product lineup globally. The company added that it aimed to see 1 million unit sales in the $6 billion market within the next three years.  “Korea, China and the Middle East may be the key markets for now. But we aim to launch the brand in some 30 countries in the near future,” said Cho Seong-jin, head of LG’s home appliance and air solution business division, in a press

LG Group said Wednesday its executives will donate a combined 10 billion won ($8.8 million), including 7 billion won from chairman Koo Bon-moo’s personal fortune, to a government-initiated fund supporting young jobseekers. LG is the latest to join the youth employment fund following other big companies such as Samsung, Hyundai Motor and SK. “We want to support the fund that aims to help expand job opportunities for young people and strengthen their job safety,” the group said in a press release.

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s new holding company Alphabet, will visit Korea on Thursday to meet key partners such as Samsung and LG, as well as local start-ups the company supports. This will be his fifth visit to Korea and the first since he took office as chairman of Alphabet in August.  During his three-day visit, the ex-Google CEO is expected to meet executives of Samsung and LG, including Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jae-yong. He met the Samsung heir apparent wh

South Korean tech giant LG Electronics is seeking a bigger role in the growing electric car sector having recently teamed up with General Motors to supply nearly all the powertrain parts and other components for the carmaker’s upcoming full-electric Chevrolet Bolt. The Bolt, which will be on sale late next year, is intended to be the first mass-market, long-range EV produced by a U.S. carmaker.GM’s Chevrolet Bolt EV conceptThe car will have a range of 320 kilometers and cost about $30,000 after

Canada’s Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, the son of a popular former prime minister, won the general election in a landslide, television networks projected -- a stunning defeat for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.Networks CBC and CTV projected the 43-year-old Trudeau -- who ran a combative campaign and offered up what he called a bold “new vision” for the nation -- would form a majority government with more than 170 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons. Canada`s Liberal party leader Justin Tru

North Korea has not yet obtained technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to put it atop a missile, South Korea’s spy agency said Tuesday, amid the repeated claims by Pyongyang that it has already secured the technology.During a parliamentary audit, the National Intelligence Service also told lawmakers that although Pyongyang is preparing for a nuclear test, there are no signs of an impending test.The NIS statement came as concerns are growing that the North has been steadily enhancing its nu

POSCO Co, South Korea’s largest steelmaker, said Tuesday that it swung to a net loss in the third quarter amid tough market conditions at home and abroad.Its consolidated net loss amounted to 658.24 billion won ($582.5 million) during the July-September period, compared with a 224 billion profit a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. Operating profit slipped 5 percent on-year to 651.91 billion won in the three-month period, and sales also retreated 7.9 percent to 13.99 trillion

LG Group is gearing up for the Internet of Things era that connects all mobile devices and electronic machines through the Web.Affiliates of the group have secured technological know-how in diverse fields of electronics, telecommunications and information technology services. They are seeking synergies to lead the still nascent but lucrative market. LG Electronics is already a major force in the field as it owns 139 IoT-related patents as of 2014 -- the largest in Korea and the fourth globally,

LG Display, the world’s largest display maker by sales, is seeking to further strengthen its unrivaled leadership in organic light emitting diode, or OLED, claiming the technology would become a game-changer in the future display market.OLED works without a backlight so it offers almost infinite contrast levels, high light-output, and no motion blur, uniformity or off-angle issues. It also allows thinner and lighter device styling compared to liquid crystal diode, or LCD.  LG Display, an OLED pi

LG Group is joining hands to transform Jejudo Island into an emissions-free, environmentally-friendly island by 2030. In partnership with the local government of the nation’s southernmost resort island and the state-run energy producer Korea Electric Corp., the Korean conglomerate recently unveiled the unprecedented, ambitious plan. Under the plan, all the energy use on the island will come from renewable energy sources such as solar power and wind, while all the cars on the road are also expect