Korea
Latest
Apple recruits Samsung VP to kickstart growth in South Korea
Apple is way behind Samsung in the Korean brand's home country, so it has decided to recruit someone who knows the market and its staunchest rival very well. According to Bloomberg, Cupertino has hired Samsung VP Brandon Yoon to lead its business in South Korea. Yoon's LinkedIn profile says he was a VP at Samsung from September 2015 to as recently as March 2018 and was also a Microsoft exec before he joined the conglomerate.
Robots had their own skiing competition at the Winter Olympics
The Olympics aren't just an event for the most talented athletes to strut their stuff on the world's stage. No, The Games are where robots can find honest work and leisure, too. Some 85 robots (spread across 11 different models, humanoid and otherwise) have been serving drinks, cleaning floors, swimming around fish tanks, guiding lost visitors at the airport and even skiing according to regional publication Korea JoongAng Daily. "We applied three yardsticks in choosing the robots to use at The Games -- how stable, new and useful they are going to be," Park Hyun-Sub, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology said.
Snapchat and NBC are going all-in on the Winter Olympics
Snapchat is teaming up with NBC to put the 2018 Winter Olympics in your pocket. Starting February 10th you'll be able to watch the Games live in the Discover tab. More than that, it sounds like there will be daily highlights as well. "Snapchatters can expect one pivotal moment from NBC's primetime broadcast to be live in Snapchat each day, and can sign up for notifications" in the app, the company says.
Drone catchers and face-detecting planes will guard the Olympics
South Korean authorities are adopting some pretty high-tech security measures for the upcoming Winter Olympics, including the deployment of drone-catching-drones and a tactical plane with facial recognition. The drones they're using to patrol the event won't chase away rogue drones that get too close to the venues: they'll cast nets to catch any UAV that shows up on the the security team's radar.
GoBreath makes fixing your lung capacity fun
If you have issues with breathing after chest trauma, surgery or anesthesia, then there are breathing exercises designed to help. Normally, your ability to breathe is calculated by using a spirometer, which isn't that interactive -- or accurate. That's what prompted a team of Korean designers to begin working on GoBreath, a digital spirometer that tries to make breathing exercises fun. It's another one of Samsung's C-Lab projects to try and spin out neat product ideas from the Korean behemoth.
The world's largest telescope will unlock the universe's oldest secrets
In the predawn hours of September 20th, 2017, the cavernous hangar doors of the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona slowly swung open and the first of seven gargantuan mirrors passed through on its way to the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile where they will be assembled into one of the largest star-gazing instruments ever constructed: the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).
LG's phone arm continues to eat away at its profits
One of the great problems with being a popular musician or comedian is that your audience is always aching for you to play the greatest hits. That can get pretty boring, especially if you want to be known as an artists with a broader, or deeper, body of work than just Achy Breaky Heart. Bear that in mind for poor LG which, yet again, has to announce that its mobile division is a furnace that turns money into ashes and dust.
Samsung's Bixby assistant is finally available worldwide
Samsung has faced a tough slog getting Bixby to the masses, but now its voice assistant is accessible in more than 200 countries including the UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa. It's been available in South Korea and the US since July, when it launched after months of delays. Part of Bixby's appeal is its positioning beyond that of a simple voice assistant. Samsung claims it learns over time, recognizing "natural language" to make interacting with your phone easier and more intuitive. It understands cross-application commands and thanks to deep integration it can be accessed without any interruptions to what you're already doing on-screen. So you can turn down screen brightness while scrolling through Facebook, for example. Users can also create custom voice commands. Instead of setting an alarm and turning on do-not-disturb mode individually, you could simply use "good night" as a shortcut.
The pro 'StarCraft' scene is alive and well
StarCraft used to be the belle of the ball when it came to eSports, but times have changed. While it still has a viable competitive scene, you're more likely to hear about Dota 2, League of Legends or even a classic rival like CS:GO. Don't tell that to Blizzard, though -- at least in South Korea, it looks like the StarCraft series might be in for a revival among pros. The developer just held an eSports history event in Busan to mark the impending launch of StarCraft: Remastered, and... well, just look at the photo above. Blizzard tells us over 10,000 people watched in person, and 500,000 watched through both streaming and TV broadcasts. That's not exactly what you'd expect from a game whose competitive appeal is on the decline.
bHaptics' TactSuit is VR haptic feedback done right
Every now and then, we come across a new attempt to bring haptic feedback to VR, but we've yet to see one that's fully convincing; those that are still around tend to be both pricey and far from ready for the market. Well, this is apparently no longer the case thanks to bHaptics. At HTC Vive X demo day in Shanghai, I got some hands-on time with this Korean startup's TactSuit, a wireless kit consisting of a haptic mask (which is a rarity), two haptic sleeves and a haptic vest. The fascinating part here is that it comes with a total of 87 feedback points, which is a lot more generous than what the other suits offer. It'll also cost less than its direct competitor, Nullspace VR's $549 Hardlight suit which only has 16 feedback points.
LG's smartphones are no longer hurting the company
It's a testament to how topsy-turvy the mobile world is that a company can make its seventh successive quarterly loss and still feel good. That's because LG's mobile division, which managed to burn almost 500 billion Korean won in the last three months of 2016, has managed to stem the flow of blood from its neck. In fact, in the first quarter of 2017, the division managed to lose just 200 million Korean won, or $176,206.
'Overwatch' has its first match-fixing scandal
In a month's time, Blizzard's popular multiplayer first-person shooter Overwatch will officially be a year old (not counting the beta). In that time, the game has accumulated over 25 million players, welcomed multiple new characters and maps, and established a very credible esports scene. Global prize money has amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2017 alone, bringing with the unfortunate threat of match fixing. In one of the first reported cases of Overwatch match-fixing, Korean police confirmed this weekend that the player manager and coach of local esports team Luminous Solar were charged without detention for attempting to fix a qualifying match for the second season of the APEX Overwatch league.
South Korean presidential candidate campaigns with 'Starcraft' maps
How should politicians connect with younger voters? How do you cut through the relentless waves of promises, speeches and the rest? If you're South Korean presidential candidate Moon Jae-in, you take to Starcraft. Perhaps even more surprisingly, he's actually a legitimate, tenable candidate who could well be the country's next leader, according to recent polls. Moon Jae-in has launched two free maps on his campaign blog, a clever idea in a country that loves it some Starcraft.
LG is finally launching its mobile payment system (in Korea)
LG is finally ready to debut its Samsung and Apple Pay rival now that it has forged a partnership with US-based firm Dynamics Inc. According to Reuters and Yohnap News, the Korean tech giant plans to launch its mobile payment system aptly called "LG Pay" in its home country this June. It will use Dynamics' wireless magnetic technology and will work with existing credit card terminals, just like Samsung's solution -- you only need to tap your phone against the device to make a purchase.
Samsung to change donation policies amid bribery scandal
In the last six months, Samsung has been no stranger to scandal. Since September, it's hurriedly dealt with the fallout from its Galaxy Note 7 recall, and in recent weeks has been thrust into an investigation over bribery claims involving some of its top executives. After staying mostly silent on the South Korean monetary probe, the electronics giant today issued a statement outlining steps to stop it from finding itself in similar position in the future.
Korean Go body to ban smartphones thanks to Google's AI
South Korean Go players will be banned from using smartphones during official tournaments in the future, and it's all thanks to Google's AlphaGo AI. The Korea Times reports that the Korea Baduk Association -- baduk being the local name for Go -- is currently drafting new rules that will outlaw smartphone use in matches. While the organization is fully aware you can't carry AlphaGo around in your pocket at the moment, it's preempting a time when certain AI tools that can give players a competitive edge do become available on smartphones.
Watch Korea's mech take its first steps with a pilot on board
That real, life-sized mech Korean company Hankook Mirae debuted recently isn't just for show. Its designer, Hollywood SFX veteran Vitaly Bulgarov, has posted a video on Facebook showing the robot taking its first steps. And, yes, it had a pilot on board. The 13-feet-tall, 1.3-ton machine was created to work in extreme conditions where humans cannot go unprotected. It won't be able to go on rescue missions anytime soon, though -- not without a power source that's portable enough.
Qualcomm slapped with $854 million anti-trust fine in Korea
Qualcomm might have to pay a hefty anti-trust fine in South Korea. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has slapped Snapdragon's creator with a 1.03 trillion won ($854 million) fine for unfair patent licensing practices. According to Reuters, the KFTC came to its decision after determining that the company took advantage of its dominant market position to force phonemakers to pay royalties "for an unnecessarily broad set of patents." Further, it gave rival chipmakers limited access to its patents, which hindered fair competition.
North Korea's 'Manbang' is a state-approved streaming service
You can't watch Netflix in North Korea, but the Democratic People's Republic now has something, at least: Manbang -- a state-approved set-top box that streams live TV, on-demand video content and newspaper articles over the internet. It's a step forward for digital media delivery for North Korea, but it's still fairly limited. Manbang, which ironically translates to "everywhere," is only available to citizens in Pyongynag, Siniju and Sariwon.
Beacons help pregnant women get seats on Korean trains
It's a perennial problem; do you give up the seat to the fifty-something year-old that just walked on the train, or will they be offended at the suggestion? Is that person pregnant and in need of respite, or just overweight? Chances are if you're having those internal discussions you could just quietly vacate your spot without a word, but a project in South Korea uses Bluetooth to make it more obvious when someone in need requires a seat.
