The Korea Times

Nexon RPG Khazan continues to expand global reach

Nexon’s action role-playing game (RPG) The First Berserker: Khazan recently marked its 200th day since its March release, drawing fresh attention for its success in expanding the universe of subsidiary Neople’s hit title Dungeon & Fighter globally. Despite being Neople’s first full-fledged console title, The First Berserker: Khazan has proven its quality through distinctive, tightly tuned action, cohesive storytelling and unique visuals. After its release, the game climbed to second place on digital distribution platform Steam’s chart for popular global games. It also earned its highest score of 85 on the entertainment review platform Metacritic, gaining recognition from both critics and players. “Our goal with The First Berserker: Khazan was to present the Dungeon & Fighter world to players around the globe, especially in Western markets, by reimagining the original’s dynamic action for consoles,” Neople Creative Director Lee Jun-ho said. “Above all, we wanted the sense of challenge and achievement to come through clearly for players in every combat experience.” The Fir

Oct 20, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

Nexon RPG Khazan continues to expand global reach

Tech & Science

Naver enhances AI search with personalized summaries

Naver is enhancing its search engine experience with artificial intelligence (AI), offering optimized and summarized AI-based search results. The tech giant announced Friday that it is hosting an event through Oct. 29 to encourage more users to experience its AI-enhanced searches, particularly for popular topics such as entertainment, sports and games. During the event, users who search for keywords related to entertainment, sports or games and click on the event banner in the search results will be randomly awarded Naver Pay points. Participants can join once per day throughout the event period. Since August, Naver has revamped search results for high-demand categories such as entertainment, sports and games using advanced AI technology, delivering a richer and more immersive search experience. Its AI engine comprehensively interprets users’ search intent, interests and the freshness of content in real time to recommend personalized results. It also optimizes the order and layout of content based on the purpose of each search. Results are arranged in a feed-style format, allowing user

Oct 17, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

Naver enhances AI search with personalized summaries

Tech & Science

KT’s data leak impact grows, full extent still unclear

Telecom giant KT is continuing to uncover the scale of mobile payment fraud cases through new findings from its comprehensive investigation into carrier billing transactions conducted between Aug. 1, 2024, and Sept. 10, 2025, but the full extent of its users’ personal data exposure still remains unclear. “It’s true that a name, date of birth and gender are required when making a mobile payment. Our joint investigation team is currently examining internal servers and related systems in detail to determine how the hackers acquired the information,” a KT official said during a press briefing at its office in central Seoul on Friday. The company revealed that unauthorized connections to illegal femtocell base stations — fixed transceivers connecting devices to one another or to a wider area — had occurred since October last year, continuing for nearly a year before being discovered last month. An additional 16 illegal base stations were found to be used in the scheme, bringing the total to 20. Around 2,200 more customers were identified as having connection histories with these

Oct 17, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

KT’s data leak impact grows, full extent still unclear

Tech & Science

YouTube under fire over allegedly delaying reporting of service disruption

YouTube is facing mounting criticism after allegedly delaying the reporting of a major service disruption that left millions of users unable to access content, failing to meet the Ministry of Science and ICT’s regulations. The major video sharing platform experienced an outage on Thursday, which reportedly lasted for about an hour from approximately 8:17 a.m. to 9:10 a.m. Yet, Google Korea is said to have notified the government about YouTube’s outage at around 9:01 a.m. Under current regulations, major broadcasting and telecommunications providers must notify the ICT ministry within ten minutes in cases where a service disruption lasts for more than thirty minutes. Following the data center fire in Seongnam in 2022 that caused massive service disruptions, the ministry designated seven major platform operators, including Google, as key broadcasting and telecommunications providers subject to government disaster management oversight. However, Google Korea reported the disruption 44 minutes after it began, missing the reporting window mandated under the regulation. The YouTube service f

Oct 16, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

YouTube under fire over allegedly delaying reporting of service disruption

Companies

Data breach scandals drag down telecoms’ Q3 earnings

The telecom sector is bracing for a steep drop in third-quarter earnings as the fallout from a series of cybersecurity incidents continues to weigh, with the combined operating profit of the three major telecoms — SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus — expected to slip below the 1 trillion won ($705 million) mark. According to financial data provider FnGuide, the three carriers’ aggregate third-quarter operating profit is projected at around 829.2 billion won, a roughly 33 percent fall year-on-year from more than 1.24 trillion won. The main reason behind the slump is SK Telecom’s large-scale leak of the universal subscriber identity module (USIM) data of nearly 27 million users. Analysts warn that the company could post its first quarterly loss since it began releasing earnings, with regulatory fines, compensation payouts and customer losses from the data breach dragging down its overall performance. The company’s third-quarter revenue is estimated at about 3.94 trillion won and operating profit at 43.7 billion won, plunging 12.96 percent and 91.8 percent, respectively, from the same pe

Oct 16, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

Data breach scandals drag down telecoms’ Q3 earnings

Tech & Science

Startup Mindlogic scales smart chatbots for global impact

Mindlogic, a tech startup co-founded by two former McKinsey consultants, is carving out a distinct position in the crowded artificial intelligence (AI) market with smart AI-powered chatbot services for both consumers and enterprises. Founded in 2019, the company leverages generative AI to deliver tailored chatbot services, including Persona, a celebrity-trained chatbot for personalized user interaction, and Informe, a multilingual information agent for universities and public institutions, as well as FactChat, a multi-large language model platform. “In 2018, it started to become clear that AI technology was beginning to find practical, real-world uses … We realized that an AI capable of holding conversations like a human would soon be possible,” Mindlogic co-CEO Kim Yong-woo said during a recent interview with The Korea Times, at the company’s office in southern Seoul. “Our goal has been to build AI that brings people not just enjoyment, but real help; something that people genuinely want to interact with and that becomes a real companion in conversation.” The company’s fla

Oct 16, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

Startup Mindlogic scales smart chatbots for global impact

Tech & Science

Kakao Mobility launches Korea’s 1st robot valet service

Kakao Mobility has launched Korea’s first robot valet parking service, using advanced parking robot technology to deliver a practical and accessible mobility solution. The company announced Wednesday that it has installed a robotic parking system at the parking lot of Chungbuk Content Enterprise Promotion Center in Cheongju, in partnership with HL Robotics, North Chungcheong Province and Chungbuk Innovation Institute of Science & Technology. The service comes as a result of Kakao Mobility’s collaboration with HL Robotics following the partnership agreement in May to commercialize autonomous parking robot technology. “In turning high-precision parking robots into a convenient real-world service, we drew on our strengths as a comprehensive mobility-as-a-service platform,” a Kakao Mobility official said. “We’ll continue to refine our platform to ensure that the benefits of advanced mobility technologies reach everyday users.” To use the system, drivers simply leave their vehicle within the yellow lines of the designated robot valet zone. After verifying their license plate and

Oct 16, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

Kakao Mobility launches Korea’s 1st robot valet service

Companies

Daewoo E&C advances in growing global LNG market

Interest in liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant construction is rising as the Alaska LNG project gains traction, following POSCO International’s preliminary agreement last month with lead developer Glenfarne Alaska LNG, signaling greater Korean participation and renewed momentum in related projects. Building on this development, Daewoo Engineering & Construction (Daewoo E&C) stands out among domestic builders for its outstanding record in LNG liquefaction plant construction, a critical segment of the LNG value chain, making it a leading Korean player in the global LNG market. “As LNG continues to gain importance as a clean and transitional energy source, the ongoing expansion of the LNG industry represents a significant opportunity for Daewoo E&C,” a company official said. “We plan to leverage our accumulated technical expertise and project experience to strengthen our position as a top-tier global construction company.” LNG combined-cycle power plants, which run on liquefied natural gas, generate far lower carbon emissions than traditional coal or oil-fired facilities. These pl

Oct 15, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

Daewoo E&C advances in growing global LNG market

Tech & Science

KT, Palantir CEOs discuss further data platform collaboration

The CEOs of KT and Palantir Technologies held their first meeting in Korea, Tuesday, to discuss ways to expand the use of Palantir’s platform across local industries. At the meeting, held at KT’s headquarters in Seoul, the company’s CEO Kim Young-shub and Palantir CEO Alex Karp reviewed the progress of the two companies’ joint initiatives to deploy Palantir’s data platforms and refined execution strategies to scale these solutions across Korean enterprises. In March, KT inked a partnership agreement with Palantir, becoming the U.S. data processing giant's first premium partner in Korea. It has been aiming to expand its presence in the local market by leveraging KT’s network infrastructure and understanding of Korea’s artificial intelligence (AI) transformation environment. “KT’s collaboration with Palantir will become a success story leading AI transformation innovation across major Korean industries,” Kim said. “We will continue to support expanding effective, data-driven decision-making powered by AI across various industrial sectors.” Coinciding with Karp’s v

Oct 14, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

KT, Palantir CEOs discuss further data platform collaboration

Tech & Science

Naver launches CEO-led task force to drive future tech ventures

Naver has launched a new task force under its CEO Choi Soo-yeon to drive the development and business expansion of next-generation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins and smart cities. The company established R-TF, short for Revolution-Task Force, through an organizational restructuring earlier this month. The team is created to leverage the research and technological achievements of Naver Labs, the tech giant’s advanced technology research subsidiary, across Naver’s services and business operations, accelerating the large-scale commercialization of cutting-edge innovations. R-TF will also work to drive the company’s global expansion into business-to-business and business-to-government markets, while leading efforts to develop and commercialize emerging technologies such as physical AI. Naver Labs CEO Seok Sang-ok will head the task force. He has overseen the company’s core technology research and commercialization initiatives. Seok was responsible for the design of Naver 1784 — the world’s first robot-friendly smart building — in Gyeonggi Pr

Oct 14, 2025By Lee Gyu-lee

Lee Gyu-lee

Read more

Nexon RPG Khazan continues to expand global reach

Naver enhances AI search with personalized summaries

KT’s data leak impact grows, full extent still unclear

YouTube under fire over allegedly delaying reporting of service disruption

Data breach scandals drag down telecoms’ Q3 earnings

Startup Mindlogic scales smart chatbots for global impact

Kakao Mobility launches Korea’s 1st robot valet service

Daewoo E&C advances in growing global LNG market

KT, Palantir CEOs discuss further data platform collaboration

Naver launches CEO-led task force to drive future tech ventures

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