korea

South Korea firms jump onto solar bandwagon

South Korea's technology giants are behind the pace in getting on the $35 billion global solar energy bandwagon, but are now making up for lost time, snapping up assets overseas.

The push factors are compelling. The markets for their traditional businesses in chips and LCD screens are saturated and their margins thinning while their rivals in Japan and Taiwan are already racing ahead in the green technology arena.

This year, the market share of South Korean companies in the global solar cells business is expected nearly double to 4.7 percent versus a year ago, according to Mark Jee, … Read more

South Korea to be first with nationwide WiMax

A project between Intel and Korea Telecom is aiming to turn South Korea into the first country with nationwide WiMax coverage.

The two companies announced today the expansion of their effort to roll out WiMax-based high-speed Internet service throughout South Korea.

Currently available in Seoul, Inchon, and Suwon, the expanded service will reach five new cities as of tomorrow--Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon, and Ulsan--and also cover the expressways of Gyeongbu, Jungbu, Honam, and Yeongdong.

The expanded service, dubbed a "mobile wonderland" by Korea Telecom, will offer a "3W" network, so named because it will consist of … Read more

South Korea's dazzling speaker designs

The U.S., England, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, and China all make bona fide high-end audio gear. Korea? I've heard some South Korean gear over the years, but I can't say any of it made a strong impression.

I recently stumbled upon Metal Sound Design's Web site, and while I can't guess what their speakers sound like, they all have a great sense of style and appear to be well-built. The South Korean company has won numerous awards and prizes over the years.

True to their name, the company's speakers are made out of metal, … Read more

North Korea denies being on Twitter, Facebook

Social networking now has so much power that even North Korea was alleged to have begun to bow to its supreme leadership.

Just recently, the mysterious home of Kim Jong Il, and, so word would have it, a few other ills too, had reportedly launched Twitter.com/uriminzok. The appearance of the similarly named Facebook.com/uriminzokkiri was also said, by normally reliable sources, to be North Korea's foray onto the world's most important social-networking site.

However, the North Korean government has now communicated through more traditional channels that it is not behind these modern vehicles.

According to a Forbes report, … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1288: QWERTY booty and the end of the Internet (podcast)

On today's show, we invent a new kind of typing (booty type, QWERTY booty, that kind of thing), and look ahead to the end of the Internet as we know it. Plus, do ethics trump shareholder rights? The Mark Hurd HP scandal rolls on.

South Korea raids Google over Street View

South Korean police raided Google's offices Tuesday to see whether the company broke local laws by collecting user data in kicking off its Street View service in the country.

The Korean National Police Agency confirmed the probe of the search giant in a statement sent to Reuters and other news sources.

"[The police] have been investigating Google Korea LLC on suspicion of unauthorized collection and storage of data on unspecified Internet users from Wi-Fi networks," the agency said in the statement. "We began the probe after having confirmed that the company seized and kept open data … Read more

Korean machine-gun robots start DMZ duty

South Korea's military has deployed machine-gun-toting robots along the heavily fortified border with North Korea, and a related promo video delivers more shock and awe than Kim Jong-Il singing the blues.

Samsung Techwin and other firms developed the SGR-1 robots, and they have been installed on a trial basis at a post in the central part of the Demilitarized Zone, Yonhap News quoted military officials as saying.

The $200,000 SGR-1s are remote-operated sentry bots that work in tandem with cameras and radar systems. They can detect intruders with heat and motion sensors, and challenge them through audio and video communications. The bots can also fire on targets with 5.5-millimeter machine guns and 40-millimeter automatic grenade launchers.

The officials didn't say how many bots were set up, but they will be installed throughout the 160-mile DMZ if the trial, which runs through the end of this year, is successful. Tensions along the DMZ are already high following the sinking of the South's warship Cheonan in March.

"Human soldiers can easily fall asleep or allow for the depreciation of their concentration over time," Samsung Techwin spokesman Huh Kwang-hak was quoted as saying by Stars and Stripes. "But these robots have automatic surveillance, which doesn't leave room for anything resembling human laziness. They also won't have any fear (of) enemy attackers on the front lines." … Read more

China, South Korea lead in green tech funding

China may arguably be the world's biggest polluter, but it seems the country is also the most serious investor in green tech.

A third of its economic recovery package was spent on green-technology investment in the form of high-speed rail trains and infrastructure, wind energy, solar energy, and energy-efficient lighting. It equates to about 3 percent of China's GDP (gross domestic product), according to a new United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) book released Wednesday.

The UNEP book, "A Global Green New Deal: Rethinking the Economic Recovery," was published by the UNEP and Cambridge University Press (CUP). … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1205: Bizarro Upside-Down Day (podcast)

Today is just baffling, frankly, for all of us. Twitter has a business plan, Opera Mini has been approved by the Apple App Store, the mobile Internet will soon overtake the fixed Internet, and despite a raging professional video game culture, Korea is trying to keep kids from gaming 24-7. But they NEED them! We're so confused! --Molly

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1205

Korea cuts off kids' online gaming at midnight

When I first heard about this, I wanted to believe it was about teeth.

Mine were still chattering from a piece of research performed by the University of Iowa that suggested that young gamers enjoyed more cavities. I experienced a severe attack of lockjaw, however, at the news that Korea--that's the nice Korea without the strange leader with dead Elvis' hair-- has imposed a nighttime ban on certain online games.

It seems, though, that the Korean government is less concerned about young gamers' molars and more concerned about their deep-seated obsession with being deep seated in their bedrooms into … Read more