South Korean tech behemoth Samsung Electronics Co.'s display and semiconductor division will sharply increase its employment of new employees in the first half to meet growing demand for its products, officials said Wednesday.

Samsung's DS division, which is in charge of producing displays, memory chips and system large-scale integration products, plans to hire nearly 2,700 employees in the first half, up 50 percent from a year earlier.

The world's largest maker of smartphones and memory chips unveiled the first-half employment plan during recent recruitment fairs at local universities.

Samsung Electronics and 12 other units of Samsung Group, South Korea's top family-controlled conglomerate, started their first-half hiring procedures the same day. Samsung and other big employers in the country usually hold two hiring events -- one in March and the other in September -- to accept university graduates.

A Samsung Electronics official said its system LSI business will hire more employees than the semiconductor division, with the first-half intake likely to be three times the level of a year earlier.

Samsung's system LSI division produces mobile application processors, often dubbed the brain of the smartphone, and other products. In January, Samsung signed a deal to supply chipsets, known as Exynos, for an in-car entertainment system to Audi, the luxury car arm of German auto giant Volkswagen.

The non-memory chip market, including system semiconductors, has been in the spotlight in keeping with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

Meanwhile, Samsung Group in late February decided to abolish its groupwide employment of new workers as part of reform measures following a high-profile corruption scandal that led to the arrest of its de facto leader and the ouster of President Park Geun-hye. (Yonhap)