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Lee Gyu-lee

Korea Times Business Reporter

Lee Gyu-lee is a business writer at The Korea Times, focusing primarily on IT & telecommunications, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA. Prior to this, she has covered a wide range of cultural news, from film, television and K-pop to lifestyle and fashion.

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Tech & Science

LG Innotek to invest $67.9 mil. to expand car AP module facility

LG Innotek will invest 100 billion won ($67.9 million) to expand its manufacturing facility in Gwangju, adding production lines for automotive application processor (AP) modules as part of its effort to grow its automotive electronics business, the company said on Tuesday. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gwangju Metropolitan Government to build the AP module production lines. With the expansion of the new facility, scheduled to open this December, the total floor area of the Gwangju site will reach about 97,000 square meters. Automotive AP modules are compact, high-performance system-on-chip units that act as the "brain" of a vehicle, integrating and controlling its electronic systems. This area is emerging as a new business for the company, which began development last year. With the rise of autonomous and connected vehicles, the global vehicle AP module market is projected to grow at an annual rate of about 22 percent. However, despite the growth outlook, only a handful of suppliers currently have production capabilities. LG Innotek has been moving quickly to

Jan 13, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
LG Innotek to invest $67.9 mil. to expand car AP module facility
Companies

Naver Plus Store gains momentum after Coupang data breach

Naver Plus Store is emerging as a key beneficiary of Coupang’s massive data breach, with rising consumer unease fueling a sharp increase in traffic and transactions on the e-commerce platform. The momentum, amplified by year-end shopping demand, has lifted expectations for solid fourth-quarter earnings at Naver. Naver’s fourth-quarter revenue for 2025 is projected to rise about 13 percent from a year earlier, while its commerce division is expected to grow even faster, posting a 37 percent year-on-year jump driven by higher transaction volumes and increased commission rates. As Coupang grapples with public backlash over its handling of a massive data breach, Naver has positioned itself as a credible alternative, attracting shoppers with faster delivery options and an expanded range of services. According to industry tracker IGAWorks, Naver Plus Store’s monthly active users climbed more than 11 percent in December compared to the previous month, surpassing 6.3 million. Shopping traffic on the platform jumped over 20 percent in a single week in early December, while transaction count

Jan 13, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Naver Plus Store gains momentum after Coupang data breach
Tech & Science

SK Telecom enjoys subscriber growth with KT's termination penalty waiver

KT’s fee waiver for early contract termination in the wake of its mobile payment fraud case, has triggered a rapid surge in subscriber outflows, with SK Telecom emerging as the biggest beneficiary. As the waiver exemption nears its end, the subscriber exodus has accelerated sharply, with daily churn surpassing 30,000 for the first time over the weekend. On Saturday alone, the telecom company lost about 33,300 subscribers. The majority of them, over 22,100, moved to SK Telecom, while about 8,000 joined LG Uplus and about 3,000 shifted to mobile virtual network operators. From Dec. 31, 2025, when the waiver took effect, until Saturday, a total of over 216,000 subscribers have switched from KT to rival carriers, with about three-quarters of those subscribers opting for SK Telecom during that period. KT rolled out a termination fee waiver late last month in response to a major data breach that resulted in unauthorized mobile payments among some of its users, allowing subscribers to terminate their services at no penalty until Tuesday. The program was retroactive to Sept. 1, 2025, for thos

Jan 12, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
SK Telecom enjoys subscriber growth with KT's termination penalty waiver
Politics

Korea revives push for Media Law reform for streaming-driven market shift

Korea is reigniting long-stalled efforts to overhaul its broadcasting regulations, seeking to establish a comprehensive media law that reflects the rapid rise of streaming-era platforms and brings traditional broadcasting and digital streaming platforms under one regulatory framework. The Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) is set to hold a roundtable with outside experts on Jan. 19 to discuss the direction for a unified media legal framework. The meeting aims to gather views on how to redesign the regulatory system to better match the current market that has shifted away from digital platform convergence and on-demand viewing. The initiative, shelved numerous times over the decades due to political disputes and jurisdictional conflicts, is raising expectations for renewed momentum as the media landscape evolves rapidly. The current Broadcasting Act, enacted in 2000, has largely retained its original form despite a surge of new media types such as internet protocol TV, internet-based streaming and free ad-supported television (FAST). Despite these new developments, a compreh

Jan 12, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Korea revives push for Media Law reform for streaming-driven market shift
Tech & Science

LG's K-EXAONE delivers top benchmark results

LG AI Research’s newly developed artificial intelligence (AI) model, K-EXAONE, created for the national AI foundation model project, has demonstrated strong competitiveness in both domestic and international AI arenas. The company shared that K-EXAONE topped 10 out of 13 benchmark tests in the first-round evaluation of the government-backed AI foundation model initiative, scheduled to conclude this month. The model earned an average score of 72 points, delivering the strongest overall performance among models developed by five consortia participating in the project. K-EXAONE scored 32 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, ranking first in Korea and seventh worldwide among open-weight models, according to the global AI analysis platform. The Korean model was also the only non-Chinese or U.S. entrant in the top 10, which was dominated by six Chinese and three U.S. models. “We planned the model’s development under realistic timelines and infrastructure constraints, using only about half of our available training data to build K-EXAONE,” said Lee Jin-sik, leader of LG

Jan 11, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
LG's K-EXAONE delivers top benchmark results
Tech & Science

Naver builds Korea’s largest AI cluster with B200 GPUs

Naver said Thursday it has completed Korea’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) computing cluster, powered by 4,000 of Nvidia’s B200 graphics processing units (GPUs). The company has now secured world-class computing capacity with the new infrastructure, which will accelerate the internet giant's efforts to advance its own foundation models and expand AI application across products and industries. Naver said the new B200 cluster combines its in-house technologies in cooling, power distribution and network optimization, based on its experiences in designing and operating large-scale GPU systems, such as Nvidia’s DGX SuperPOD in 2019. “The completion of the latest AI infrastructure is significant because it goes beyond a technology investment to become a core asset that strengthens the nation’s AI competitiveness and technological sovereignty,” Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon said. “With faster training and iterative development now possible, team Naver will continue delivering practical value by bringing advanced AI across services and industries.” The cluster, designed for massi

Jan 8, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Naver builds Korea’s largest AI cluster with B200 GPUs
Companies

Samsung Electronics union releases English collective bargaining agreement

The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), the second-largest workers' union of Samsung Electronics, for the first time issued an English translation of the collective bargaining agreement signed on March 5, 2025. The union announced Thursday that it has completed the agreement's translation and distributed it to all Samsung Electronics employees. Until now, the agreement was only available in Korean, making it difficult for the company’s foreign employees to fully grasp the agreement’s provisions, including key employment terms, benefits and workplace protections. The initiative intends to ensure that foreign employees can clearly understand their terms and conditions of employment and their labor rights, the NSEU said. “Publishing the collective bargaining agreement in English lays the groundwork for eliminating blind spots in the working conditions of foreign employees at Samsung Electronics,” the union’s acting chair Woo Ha-kyung said. “NSEU will serve as a reliable safeguard for foreign employees as well.” The translation was carried out by attorney Park Jong‑in a

Jan 8, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Samsung Electronics union releases English collective bargaining agreement
Tech & Science

National AI model project faces controversies over plagiarism claims

The national artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model project, promoted as a major step towards the country’s AI sovereignty, has hit unexpected turbulence with allegations that its leading contenders borrowed key components from Chinese models, triggering debate over defining "development from scratch." Two of five consortia, led by Naver Cloud and Upstage, have been embroiled in controversy over meeting the project’s essential from-scratch requirement. Naver Cloud came under fire when claims surfaced in developer communities earlier this week that its flagship model for the project, HyperCLOVA X SEED 32B Think, shows striking similarities to Alibaba’s open-sourced Qwen 2.4 large language model (LLM) in its vision encoder. A vision encoder is a component that processes images and video into data that AI can understand. The cosine similarity and Pearson correlation, the two widely used comparison methods, between the two models’ vision encoder values exceeded 99.5 percent and 98.9 percent, suggesting near-identical patterns. Naver Cloud acknowledged that it used outside open

Jan 7, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
National AI model project faces controversies over plagiarism claims
Tech & Science

LG CNS bags series of deals to modernize military IT networks

LG CNS has secured two large-scale government projects aimed at modernizing Korea’s military information technology (IT) infrastructure, extending its reach into the country’s defense tech sector. The company announced it recently signed contracts with the Defense Communication Command (DCC) to integrate communication networks across the armed forces, and with the Defense Computing Information Agency (DCIA) to upgrade systems and infrastructure at defense facilities. The latest contracts come as the company has demonstrated its technical expertise in previous military projects, successfully delivering key systems such as the Korea Joint Command and Control System, a C4I communications platform for the Army and Air Force, and a next-generation finance system for defense. “By bringing together our expertise in defense IT, LG CNS will successfully deliver both projects and drive digital innovation across the defense sector,” said Bae Min, the company’s senior vice president of finance and public business division. Over the next 15 months, DCC’s project will merge the separate ne

Jan 7, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
LG CNS bags series of deals to modernize military IT networks
Tech & Science

CES 2026 Ceragem showcases AI-powered wellness home

Health care equipment maker Ceragem will introduce its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart home, Alive Intelligence Wellness Home, at tech fair CES 2026, which opens on Tuesday (local time) in Las Vegas. At the show, the firm plans to showcase its latest vision for home health care, which turns the home itself into “an integrated health management platform.” To achieve this vision, the company is introducing a residential model that links wellness devices and sensors across the home from living room to bedrooms, bathrooms and children’s rooms. It recognizes users’ routines and health status, and integrates a network that tracks well-being and responds in real time, based on lifestyle patterns, biometric data and daily rhythms. The model tailors residential spaces to reflect age-specific lifestyles, from adolescence to adulthood to old age, and provide personalized care. “Through CES 2026, we wanted to show how AI can evolve beyond a tool into a living companion that understands and supports users in their daily lives,” a company official said. “Our Alive Intelligenc

Jan 6, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
[CES 2026] Ceragem showcases AI-powered wellness home
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