South Korean energy-to-material firm Hanwha Solutions plans to acquire a 4.67 percent stake in Norway-based polysilicon manufacturer REC Silicon for $44 million to achieve a full-fledged US solar supply chain, the company said Thursday. Hanwha will buy the stake from Norwegian renewable energy investment firm Aker Horizons. With the deal, Hanwha will become the largest shareholder of REC Silicon that is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Earlier in January, Hanwha bought a 16.67 percent stak

South Korea’s battery maker LG Energy Solution on Thursday announced plans to build a 4.8 trillion-won ($4.1 billion) lithium-ion battery plant in Ontario, Canada with carmaker Stellantis and a 1.7 trillion-won cylindrical battery plant in Arizona, a first of its kind in the United States. To support the plan, LG Energy Solution approved a combined capital commitment of $2 billion over the course of the construction, which gained board approval Wednesday, showed filings with the Financial

SK Trading International, a subsidiary of South Korean refiner SK Innovation, announced Wednesday plans to purchase up to 200,000 barrels of “net-zero oil” each year for five years from US-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., in a move to use the sustainable commodity for commercial products. The affiliates of SK Group, South Korea’s third-largest conglomerate by assets, will use the oil for products including eco-friendly aviation fuel. SK’s purchase of net-zero oil will b

LG AI Research, an in-house research hub of South Korea‘s fourth-largest conglomerate, said Wednesday it has opened a new research center in the United States. The center is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, near the University of Michigan. It is LG AI Research’s first overseas location. The new facility will be led by Lee Hong-lak, chief scientist of AI and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. The center’s fundamental researc

Posco Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Choi Jeong-woo met Alberto Fernandez, president of Argentina, just ahead of the construction of a $830 million lithium plant in the country, the South Korean company said Tuesday. Choi told Fernandez that the Argentinian government‘s support is critical to Posco‘s new growth momentum, as lithium is considered a key material for the battery component that powers ecofriendly vehicles, Korea’s largest steelmaker said in a statement

South Korea is now experiencing a digital skill shortage among employers here as the country -- considered one of the most wired in the world -- is seeing local workers’ digital skills largely outdated in the wake of the cloud era, an estimate showed Tuesday. Over the next year alone, roughly 10 million more people in South Korea are estimated to require digital skills training, according to an estimate by consulting firm AlphaBeta. This is equivalent to some 37 percent of the workforce

South Korea’s entertainment powerhouse CJ ENM is investing 100 billion won ($82.3 million) in KT StudioGenie, a media arm of the domestic telecommunications firm, in a bid to establish bilateral ties for media content targeting global audience, a filing showed Monday. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding the same day, setting a deadline for the acquisition 90 days after the announcement. As a result, CJ ENM will become a minority shareholder with nearly a 10 percent sta

The 10th annual secondary battery event InterBattery gave visitors a glimpse of how close the world is to the era where electric vehicles go mainstream. Cars showcased in the three-day event at Coex in Seoul beginning Thursday indicated room for wider applications of batteries, even to the degree of reincarnating the gas-guzzling cars that were once declared dead, and of having exotic cars and luxury cars keep their performance afloat while run on electric batteries. US carmaker General Motor&

Samsung Electronics unveiled its new midrange smartphones -- Galaxy A33 5G and A53 5G -- at the Galaxy A event held Thursday, a week after its smartphone rival Apple came out with the latest iPhone SE series. The new lineup is part of the South Korean tech giant’s move aimed at giving Android users access to 5G connectivity at a more affordable price and to lure more people into its own Galaxy ecosystem. “We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to experience the positive impa

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an additional 16-month jail sentence to former Samsung Electronics Vice President Kang Kyung-hoon for his attempts to break up a labor union in South Korea‘s largest conglomerate. This is the final court ruling that found the executive guilty over his scheme to sabotage labor union activities at Everland, an operator of an amusement park in Korea. Everland was considered a key affiliate in Samsung’s corporate structure, and has been merged into S

Netflix proposed ways to reduce the burden on network providers in the first appellate court hearing over whether the streaming service is liable to pay network usage fees to SK Broadband. The court hearing, held Wednesday evening at the Seoul High Court, is the first since a preliminary hearing took place in December. The case follows a district court ruling in June that gave SK Broadband an upper hand -- the first ruling in the world over which party is obliged to pay network usage fees. Bo

Samsung Electronics’ latest announcement to invest 15.88 billion rupees ($207.8 million) to set up a new refrigerator parts plant in India will not affect its household appliance factory operation in Jiangsu province, China, according to the consumer electronic goods company Wednesday. Samsung’s plan in conjunction with the provincial government of Tamil Nadu for the plant comes after former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Edappadi Palaniswami, in 2020 called on global tech giants inc

SK Siltron, South Korea‘s sole silicon wafer maker for chips, plans to spend a combined 1.05 trillion won ($845.61 million) to build a new fab that manufactures 300-millimeter wafers in order to address a chip shortage due to wafer supply constraints, a filing showed Wednesday. With a board approval Tuesday, the key silicon wafer supplier to the country’s chip powerhouses Samsung Electronics and SK hynix aims to embark on the fab construction in the first half at a 42,716 square-me

SK Geo Centric announced Tuesday a $55 million investment in US-based waste plastic recycling firm PureCycle Technologies, as well as plans to create a joint venture with the US firm within this year. SK Geo Centric was the new investor taking part in PureCycle‘s $250 million private fundraising via common stocks, announced March 9, along with existing shareholders including Sylebra Capital and Samlyn Capital. The net proceeds will support the construction of PureCycle plants in Ohio and

An upcoming electric vehicle battery plant in Turkey built by South Korean company SK On is the latest testament that its battery alliance with US carmaker Ford is ever becoming stronger. On Monday, SK On announced plans to set up a new plant on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey, with an annual capacity of between 30 and 45 gigawatt-hour starting as early as 2025, in a deal with US carmaker Ford and Turkish conglomerate Koc. The battery arm of South Korea-based conglomerate SK, Ford and Koc hav

South Korean conglomerates Samsung and Posco on Monday each announced plans to build production lines of solid-state batteries, an up-and-coming technology in making fireproof and energy-dense lithium-ion batteries that can boost electric vehicle range. Samsung SDI, a battery arm of Korea’s largest conglomerate by assets, said the company has started the construction of a 6,500-square-meter pilot assembly line for manufacturing solid-state batteries that power electric cars in Suwon, Gye

Seoul-based LG Electronics announced Monday that it is working with Korean American robot engineer Dennis Hong to develop a robotics solution for the logistics sector. The collaboration between LG Electronics’ Advanced Robotics Lab and Hong, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, is aimed at promoting “advances in robotics technology to a wider audience” so that products can be shipped from warehouses to customers mor

The National Pension Service, the second-largest shareholder of South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics, is poised to vote against Kyung Kye-hyun, who was named head of Samsung’s chip business in December, a disclosure showed Sunday. As the public pension fund of Korea with 8.53 percent voting rights, NPS cited Kyung’s “history of undermining the enterprise value or violating shareholders’ rights,” without elaborating further. Kyung was one of three board mem

BARCELONA, Spain -- The early 5G rollout in South Korea brought Switzerland-based ID Quantique’s quantum-safe technology to life on smartphones, backbone networks and will potentially be on mobile camera modules and cars. With outcomes and prototypes in Asia keen on 5G penetration, primarily with its controlling shareholder SK Telecom, IDQ looks to take its aim back at Europe as its continent-wide quantum network infrastructure project is starting to crystalize. “The first deploym

BARCELONA, Spain -- The South Korean Minister of Science and ICT Lim Hye-sook said the government signed a memorandum of understanding with GSMA, host of the Mobile World Congress 2022, to support mutual interests in the metaverse and its ecosystem development. Under the agreement, the ministry will share information in regard to the progress of the metaverse ecosystem in Korea with GSMA. In return, GSMA is set to present Korea to its members and developers around the world so that Korean busin