Global food service and restaurant franchise operator, Theborn Korea, has partnered with Italian oven manufacturer UNOX to program its standardized recipes into commercial equipment, paving the way for an automated K-food rollout across Europe. Theborn Korea said Wednesday it signed a memorandum of understanding with UNOX on Nov. 4 at the Italian company's headquarters, combining its expertise in Korean cuisine and TBK sauces with UNOX's commercial cooking technology. Under the agreement, the companies will test Korean dishes using 11 varieties of TBK sauces and convert cooking conditions into data to develop standardized recipes and operating manuals. The goal is to allow local restaurant workers with little experience preparing Korean food to produce dishes with consistent taste and quality using UNOX smart ovens. Founded in 1990, UNOX specializes in commercial smart ovens and recorded global revenue of 360 million euros (540.6 billion won) last year, according to Theborn Korea. Its product lineup includes convection ovens, which use circulating hot air for even cooking, and combination

Hanwha Qcells has earned top ratings across two major international solar module evaluations, strengthening its position in the U.S. market as manufacturers face growing pressure to demonstrate product quality and domestic production credentials. The solar division of Hanwha Solutions said Wednesday that its modules received Top Performer recognition in all eight categories of the 2026 PV Module Reliability Scorecard published by U.S.-based Kiwa PVEL, one of the industry’s leading independent testing organizations The evaluation, released Tuesday (local time), subjected solar modules to eight rigorous tests designed to simulate harsh operating conditions, including high temperatures, humidity, sudden temperature changes, mechanical stress and hail impacts. The assessment also included modules manufactured at Hanwha Qcells’ Cartersville, Georgia, facility, which was completed in July. The results are particularly significant for the U.S. market, where locally manufactured products can qualify for additional tax incentives under the domestic content bonus credit provisions of the inves

Korea is pushing ahead with plans for a new generation of aircraft that can take off and land without runways, following a record-setting seven-day flight by its solar-powered unmanned aircraft in the stratosphere. The Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) announced Wednesday that it will pursue development of hybrid vertical takeoff and landing aircraft after its EAV-4 unmanned aerial vehicle completed 170 hours and 5 minutes of continuous flight from Aug. 18 to 25. The achievement more than tripled Korea's previous domestic endurance record of 53 hours, set by the EAV-3 in 2020, and ranked second globally behind Airbus' Zephyr, according to the agency. During the flight test, the EAV-4 also demonstrated wildfire surveillance capabilities, using electro-optical and infrared cameras to identify ignition points within seconds and track and predict the direction of smoke and the movement of embers. Flying at an altitude of about 20 kilometers, solar-powered stratospheric aircraft can remain airborne for extended periods, potentially serving as persistent surveillance platforms and emergenc

Homeplus, which is undergoing court-led corporate rehabilitation, is facing a deepening survival crisis amid mounting financial difficulties, including unpaid supplier bills, delayed wages and overdue utility payments, industry officials said Wednesday. The company's prolonged search for a buyer has added to uncertainty over its future, prompting its labor union to urge the government to provide emergency funding to prevent further job losses. The major supermarket chain filed for rehabilitation with the Seoul Bankruptcy Court in March last year following a credit rating downgrade. It subsequently suspended operations at some stores before reopening some of them in mid-August this year, but continues to struggle with weak sales and supply disruptions. According to industry insiders, Homeplus failed to fully settle payments in cash to some fresh food suppliers on Oct. 30. The retailer paid 90 percent of amounts owed for agricultural and seafood products in cash, offsetting the remainder against existing supplier deposits. Payments for meat and deli products were covered entirely by those

Hana Financial Group launched its annual two-month volunteer campaign, kicking it off with a kimchi-making event for vulnerable households, the company said Wednesday. The group held a launch ceremony for its "Everyone's Hana Day" campaign at its Seoul office, followed by a kimchi-making event attended by about 250 people, including Chairman Ham Young-joo, employees and their families. At Wednesday's event, participants prepared 11,111 heads of kimchi for distribution to people in need. Ham and other employees also visited a welfare facility for people with disabilities in Yongsan District, Seoul, to deliver kimchi and daily necessities. "Sharing through action has the power to make our society a warmer place,” Ham said. “I hope that the seeds of warmth we plant today will grow into happiness for all, and that everyone at Hana Financial will work together toward that goal.” The company's annual flagship environmental, social and governance initiative, which began in 2011, runs for two months, with employees across the group's affiliates taking part in various volunteer work and don

Once known primarily as a showcase for consumer electronics, CES is becoming an increasingly important stage for industrial AI, with Korea’s major tech and auto firms preparing to demonstrate the commercial value of artificial intelligence (AI) across industries ranging from semiconductors and robotics to batteries and autonomous driving. Samsung Electronics is expected to focus on AI semiconductors and robotics, while LG affiliates are set to showcase AI-powered appliances and battery technologies. Kia, under Hyundai Motor Group, plans to use the event to highlight advances in autonomous driving through its U.S.-based self-driving subsidiary Motional. The shift reflects Korean firms’ push to move beyond futuristic concepts and demonstrate AI technologies with clearer paths to commercialization. According to the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes the annual CES tech fair in January, Samsung's semiconductor division has already won multiple CES 2027 Innovation Awards for memory products. The winning technologies include UFS 5.0, a next-generation storage solution design

Hyundai Motor President Sung Kim, right, who oversees the automaker's strategic planning, poses with Yum Hong-chul, chairman of the organizing committee for the Chungcheong 2027 FISU World University Games, during a sponsorship agreement ceremony at Hyundai Motor Group's headquarters in Seoul, Wednesday. The event will be held from Aug. 1–12, 2027 across Daejeon, Sejong, North Chungcheong and South Chungcheong provinces. More than 15,000 athletes and team officials from about 150 countries are expected to compete in 18 sports. Courtesy of Hyundai Motor Group

The Lotte Foundation for Arts, the cultural foundation of Lotte Group, won the grand prize at this year’s Mecenat Awards for its support of classical music and contemporary art, the foundation said Wednesday. The foundation received the award, which comes with a presidential citation, at the 27th Mecenat Awards ceremony held Tuesday at The Westin Josun Seoul hotel. “Mecenat” is a French term for corporate patronage of the arts. The Korea Mecenat Association has hosted the awards since 1999 to honor companies and business leaders who have contributed to the development of culture and the arts in Korea. Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin founded the foundation in 2015. It started with 20 billion won ($14.7 million), half from his personal funds and half from three Lotte affiliates. Lotte says it has invested about 200 billion won in arts support since then. The foundation runs Lotte Concert Hall and Lotte Museum of Art, both in the Lotte World Tower complex in Songpa District, southern Seoul. It is the only foundation set up by a Korean company that operates both a concert hall with

Industrial plant builder Samsung E&A said Wednesday that it won a MEED Projects Award for the 15th consecutive year, this time for its Jafurah gas processing project in Saudi Arabia. The Jafurah Gas Processing Facilities project received the Strategic Energy Infrastructure Award, one of the special awards, at a ceremony held Tuesday in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the company said. MEED, originally known as the Middle East Economic Digest, is a weekly business publication covering the Middle East. Each year, it holds awards that recognize outstanding projects in the Middle East and North Africa. Samsung E&A, a Korean engineering and construction company formerly known as Samsung Engineering, has won an award every year since 2012. The Jafurah project is one of Saudi Arabia’s largest unconventional gas field developments. Unconventional gas, such as shale gas, is trapped in rock formations and is harder to extract than gas from conventional reservoirs. Samsung E&A won the contract from the Saudi state energy giant Aramco and handled the entire engineering, procurement and construction p

Musinsa, Korea’s largest online fashion platform, has launched an online service that lets companies and other organizations design and order custom uniforms in one place, the company said Wednesday. The business-to-business platform, called Musinsa Uniform, went live Tuesday. It is aimed at companies, public institutions and amateur clubs that buy clothing in bulk. Until now, Musinsa handled these orders only through a “bulk purchase inquiry” option on its main online store, Musinsa Store. Customers can choose garments from three brands the company runs: Musinsa Standard, its in-house basics label; Musinsa Standard Sports, its activewear line; and the U.S. sportswear brand Champion, which a Musinsa subsidiary distributes in Korea. The products available include short- and long-sleeve T-shirts, pique polo shirts, hooded zip-up sweatshirts and fleece jackets. Buyers can add an organization’s name or logo by embroidery, screen printing or digital printing. Musinsa said it built the platform so customers no longer have to choose garments, find a separate printing company and compar

GS Group and POSCO will form a strategic partnership in the artificial intelligence (AI) data center market, combining GS Group's expertise in data center construction and operation with POSCO's high-quality steel materials and technological solutions. GS Group said Wednesday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with POSCO on a strategic partnership in the AI data center business. The signing ceremony was attended by GS Group Vice Chairman Hong Soon-ki, POSCO CEO Lee Hee-geun and other executives from both companies. Through the agreement, the two companies plan to minimize delays in the supply of equipment and materials during the construction of large-scale data centers and optimize material selection and design solutions to shorten construction periods and reduce costs. These efforts are expected to facilitate the early operation of data centers and improve their profitability, GS Group said. The agreement also includes practical cooperation to explore ways to reduce operating costs, improve space utilization and enhance the durability of facilities and equipment to stren

Kumho Petrochemical Group is strengthening safety and environmental management across its affiliates to support sustainable growth, stepping up efforts to identify workplace hazards, prevent accidents and reduce environmental impacts. The group's four petrochemical affiliates — Kumho Petrochemical, Kumho P&B Chemicals, Kumho Mitsui Chemicals and Kumho Polychem — jointly operate a safety, health and environment management system, with each company tailoring its measures to its own operations. Kumho Petrochemical focuses on identifying and addressing potential hazards before they lead to accidents, conducting risk assessments covering potential incidents and near misses during production and work processes. Last year, the company revised its assessment procedures to improve documentation and monitoring. It is also deploying more smart safety technologies at its facilities, including intelligent surveillance systems, smart airbags, safety helmets and virtual reality equipment for safety training. Kumho P&B Chemicals is focusing on hazardous chemical management and emergency response mea

Fresh uncertainties surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) investments following the US midterms could provide a "golden opportunity" for Korea, a high-level science ministry official said Wednesday. Second Vice Science Minister Ryu Je-myung made the remarks at a congratulatory address during an AI conference hosted by the ministry in Seoul as he mentioned growing concerns in the United States that the incoming Democratic Congress could tighten regulations on AI and data centers. "There are observations that market uncertainty could increase amid potential changes in the investment environment for AI and data centers (following the US midterms)," Ryu said at the event. "It (actually) provides a golden opportunity to narrow our gap with leading countries and secure overwhelming national AI competitiveness through aggressive and speedy investments and technological innovation," he added. To that end, the government is considering doubling the amount of funding for the AI sector to around 9.4 trillion won next year, he said. "South Korea is a major research and development powerhouse, whos

Korean game developers have reported mixed third-quarter earnings. NC returned to profitability from a year earlier, while Nexon defied market pessimism with solid revenue from its live service games. Krafton, meanwhile, saw its operating profit decline as revenue from PUBG: Battlegrounds (PUBG) failed to keep pace with rising costs associated with its business diversification efforts. NC announced its third-quarter earnings Wednesday, reporting sales of 686.5 billion won ($514.2 million) and an operating profit of 119.6 billion won. Revenue surged 91 percent year-on-year, while the company swung to an operating profit from a loss of 750 million won in the same period last year. Overseas sales accounted for 54 percent of total revenue, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of growth in their share, as the company continued to expand its global revenue base, particularly in North America and Europe. Notably, revenue from mobile casual games increased from the previous quarter to 171.9 billion won. The segment accounted for 25 percent of total revenue, contributing to the diversification o

LG Innotek said Wednesday it received the highest rating in the 2025 Win-Win Growth Index assessment conducted by the Korea Commission for Corporate Partnership, marking its 10th consecutive year at the top level. The index evaluates companies' efforts to promote mutually beneficial partnerships with suppliers and classifies them into five grades, ranging from outstanding to very inadequate. LG Innotek has maintained the highest possible rating since the 2016 assessment, reflecting its sustained efforts to strengthen partnerships with suppliers. Recognizing that suppliers' competitiveness directly contributes to its own, the company has steadily expanded its support programs to address changing business conditions. Its support programs span financing, production innovation, smart factory development, environmental, social and governance (ESG) management, workforce training, artificial intelligence (AI), industrial safety and technology protection. The company operates a 143 billion won ($107 million) supplier partnership fund, established in 2010 to provide loans at below-market interest

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is collaborating with Samsung Electronics on its next-generation embedded processors, industry officials said Wednesday. The US semiconductor company unveiled its sixth-generation AMD EPYC Embedded 9006 on Tuesday (local time), incorporating Samsung's enterprise memory and storage solutions, they said. "As memory and input/output technologies advance, manufacturing test environments must also evolve to meet growing performance and bandwidth requirements," Choi Jang-seok, a senior Samsung Electronics official, said. "We look forward to working with AMD to bring these capabilities to our manufacturing test infrastructure." AMD's new processors deliver up to 1.8 times the throughput of the previous generation. The processors are designed for industrial applications requiring high-performance computing. Through the collaboration, Samsung Electronics aims to secure the computing power, memory bandwidth and high-speed data processing capabilities needed to validate next-generation memory performance.

Korea's fair trade watchdog said Wednesday it has decided to impose 1.62 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in fines on 15 financial companies for colluding in government bond auctions for more than three years. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said the firms, all primary dealers comprising 10 brokerage houses and five banks, exchanged information on bidding yields and volumes through phone calls and messaging apps regarding 150 auctions between January 2020 and June 2023. It marked the largest fine ever imposed by the FTC in a single case, surpassing the previous record of 1.03 trillion won levied on Qualcomm for unfair practices in 2016. In 145 of those auctions, the companies went beyond exchanging information to reach agreements on specific bidding yields or volumes, constituting bid rigging, the watchdog said. "Dealers in charge of bidding at the 15 companies exchanged information on bidding volumes or yields on auction days, routinely engaging in collusion, with agreements sometimes reached within seconds," the FTC said. The watchdog noted such collusion constitutes a serious violation as g

Leica’s latest 4K laser projector promises brighter pictures, improved contrast and screen sizes of up to 300 inches, without requiring a dedicated home cinema room.

Who’s affected, what’s exposed and is HardwareZone’s member data affected? We sum up the incident and steps taken.

Changi Airport and Jewel are celebrating Pokemon’s 30th anniversary with themed displays, shows and exclusive merchandise.

The MDR-3R revives the design of Sony’s 1979 headphones, with a Stranger Things edition joining it in Singapore this December.

App compatibility was one of the early criticisms of Apple’s foldable phone, but developer support is growing rapidly.

At 500km/h, you’ll cover the length of Singapore in under 6 minutes.

The Huawei FreeBuds SE 5 Max combines long battery life, support for high-quality audio codecs, and active noise cancellation (ANC) technology for just S$58. Details within.

A political storm sparked by US media reports alleging American intelligence agencies suspect Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was targeted in an espionage operation – a claim Beijing has denied – threatens to intensify Washington’s tech blockade on China following a Democratic midterm victory. Analysts said the twin developments could give the US Congress the political momentum needed to plug loopholes in existing semiconductor restrictions, accelerating efforts to curb third-country chip smuggling and...

Korean neural processing unit (NPU) developer DEEPX's new artificial intelligence (AI) chip has been named a CES 2027 Innovation Awards honoree in the AI category, the company said Tuesday. The CES Innovation Awards recognize products based on their technological capabilities, design and innovation. The award-winning chip is DX-M2, an ultra-low-power generative AI chip designed to run large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs) directly on robots and industrial devices. It is built on Samsung Electronics' 2-nanometer foundry process and designed to perform generative AI inference while consuming approximately 5 watts of power. While conventional on-device AI chips primarily focus on image recognition and object detection, the DX-M2 is designed to enable devices to understand their surroundings and make decisions using generative AI. DEEPX expects the chip to reduce reliance on cloud computing and expand AI applications in robots, smart devices and industrial systems. The DX-M2 completed its mask tape-out earlier this month, which is the process of transferring finalized

LG Innotek said Tuesday that its next-generation automotive lighting module, Nexlide C+, has won a CES 2027 Innovation Award, marking the third consecutive year that its Nexlide series has received the recognition. Nexlide is LG Innotek's flexible automotive lighting brand which uses the company’s own optical design, light distribution technologies and advanced materials to enable various lighting designs in a thinner profile. LG Innotek holds more than 700 patents related to surface lighting technology. Nexlide C+ won the recognition with its capability to display two or more three-dimensional images through a single lighting module. For example, the same module can show diagonal patterns when viewed from the left and vertical patterns when viewed from the right, creating different visual effects depending on the viewing angle. The technology can be used in various parts of a vehicle, including taillights, front grille lighting and interior ambient lighting. Nexlide C+ is also less than 3 millimeters thick, allowing it to fit into narrow spaces inside vehicles. LG Innotek said it is t

Shinsegae, the operator of Korea's major department store chain, on Tuesday reported its third-quarter net profit of 119 billion won ($88.5 million), a 146.4 percent jump from a year earlier. The retailer said in a regulatory filing that operating profit for the July-September period increased 64.7 percent on-year to 164.3 billion won. Revenue also inched up 1.2 percent to 1.65 trillion won. The earnings exceeded market expectations. The average estimate of net profit by analysts stood at 84.5 billion won, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.

Genesis is stepping up competition in the full-size luxury SUV market with the full-electric GV90, taking aim at German rivals — BMW and Mercedes-Benz — as it seeks to carve out a bigger share of the lucrative high-end segment. The brand unveiled on Tuesday pricing for the GV90, its first full-size flagship SUV, starting at 139.5 million won ($103,000) in Korea. This places the vehicle in a similar price range to the BMW X7 and Mercedes-Benz GLS, positioning Genesis to compete directly for buyers who have traditionally favored German luxury SUVs. The launch represents a significant test for Genesis, which has spent years building its reputation as a premium brand, but has yet to establish the same level of recognition as BMW and Mercedes-Benz in the upper reaches of the luxury market. The GV90 sets itself apart from its rivals with an all-electric powertrain, along with a focus on rear-seat comfort and advanced technology. It uses a 123.5-kilowatt-hour battery, the largest among Hyundai Motor Group's electric vehicles (EVs), and can travel up to 500 kilometers on a single charge. The

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are expected to face growing pressure on their TV businesses, as rising prices of Chinese-made LCD panels drive up production costs, particularly for low- and mid-range TVs. According to market tracker Omdia, the cash cost of a 65-inch LCD TV open cell is projected to rise from $112 in 2025 to $116.80 this year and $124.55 in 2027, as higher component and material prices increase manufacturing costs. An open cell refers to an LCD panel before the backlight and other components are assembled into a complete display module. Omdia noted that three Chinese panel makers — CSOT, HKC and BOE — sent official letters to their clients outlining plans to raise prices for some panels starting in September or the fourth quarter. According to another market tracker, TrendForce, LCD panel prices have remained flat, with 55-inch and 65-inch panels holding steady at $123 and $173, respectively, in October and November. However, Omdia expects LCD TV panel makers to successfully raise prices in December as “rising costs approach a tipping point.” LG Electronic