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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

Telecoms set for mixed Q2 as AI investment race looms

Major telecom companies — SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus — are expected to report mixed second-quarter earnings, as diverging cost structures and one-off factors shape performance ahead of a broader push into artificial intelligence (AI) investments in the second half of the year. SK Telecom is expected to see a sharp rebound from the damage of its hacking incident last year and LG Uplus will see stable growth, while KT is expected to see earnings decline amid continued cost pressures. According to consensus forecasts compiled by FnGuide, the three telecom operators are expected to post combined second-quarter revenue of 15.2 trillion won ($10.1 billion) and operating profit of 1.45 trillion won. Revenue is forecast to rise 2.6 percent from a year earlier, while operating profit is expected to decline 12.7 percent, largely due to weaker performance at KT. SK Telecom is projected to post a sharp rebound in operating profit. Its estimated second-quarter revenue is at 4.41 trillion won, while operating profit is 527.9 billion won, up about 56 percent from a year earlier. The improvement lar

Jul 9, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Telecoms set for mixed Q2 as AI investment race looms
Tech & Science

LG Energy Solution expands US ESS production with Tennessee LFP cell launch

LG Energy Solution (LGES) is expanding its energy storage system (ESS) production capacity in North America, as it moves to strengthen its supply chain and capture a larger share of the region’s rapidly growing market. Ultium Cells, a joint venture between LGES and General Motors, began mass production of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells for ESS at its plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee on Tuesday (local time). Commercial production at the Tennessee facility comes about four months after Ultium Cells announced plans to repurpose part of its electric vehicle (EV) battery production capacity into ESS manufacturing. The joint venture invested approximately $70 million in the conversion, enabling the plant to begin large-scale production of LFP cells in the second quarter. The batteries produced at the Tennessee plant will be supplied through LGES' U.S.-based ESS system integration subsidiary Vertech, serving utility-scale, commercial, industrial and residential energy storage projects across the country. The move reflects the company’s strategic pivot toward the fast-growing ESS s

Jul 8, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
LG Energy Solution expands US ESS production with Tennessee LFP cell launch
Tech & Science

LG AI Research showcases real-world EXAONE AI applications at ICML 2026

LG AI Research is showcasing a series of industrial artificial intelligence (AI) applications powered by its large language model (LLM) EXAONE at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2026, underscoring its push to use advanced AI for real-world commercial solutions. The conference, taking place at Coex in southeastern Seoul from Monday through Friday, is being held in Korea for the first time. It is widely regarded as one of the world's top three AI and machine learning research forums. For the event, the company highlights the real-world deployment of its LLM across materials science, finance and data infrastructure, including EXAONE Discovery, an AI platform designed to accelerate new materials and drug development. EXAONE Discovery, built on the company’s AI co-scientist technology, reads unstructured scientific papers, extracts molecular structures and proposes new candidate compounds in response to researchers’ queries. LG AI Research secured patents covering this end‑to‑end AI‑driven discovery workflow earlier this year and has since applied it in resea

Jul 8, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
LG AI Research showcases real-world EXAONE AI applications at ICML 2026
Companies

Daekyo expands global education footprint with personalized learning model

Education company Daekyo is accelerating its global expansion with businesses including its supplemental education service Eye Level and storytelling play gym program TuniTuni, broadening its portfolio from tutoring into early childhood and activity-based programs as it marks its 50th anniversary. Founded in 1976, Daekyo, best known for its flagship supplemental education service Noonnoppi, built its domestic presence on personalized learning, including home-visit tutoring and level-based curricula. The company's roots date back to a small study room, where it introduced an approach that assessed each student's learning level rather than relying solely on grade-based instruction. At a time when education was largely standardized and teacher-led, Daekyo focused on assessing individual proficiency and developing step-by-step learning programs, supported by its self-developed teaching materials, ongoing monitoring and teacher feedback. The approach helped drive the adoption of level-based and self-directed learning in Korea’s private education market. The model proved adaptable during regu

Jul 8, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Daekyo expands global education footprint with personalized learning model
Tech & Science

Kling AI spotlights advances in AI video through global competition

Kling AI, the artificial intelligence (AI) video arm of Chinese short‑form giant Kuaishou, held its NEXTGEN Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, spotlighting how AI‑native filmmaking is lowering barriers to professional production and pushing generative video models into the mainstream for a new generation of creators. Co-hosted with MBC C&I’s AI Contents Lab and the Korean Society for Media Policy Studies (KSMPS), the event brought together winners from the company’s three competitions — the NEXTGEN 2026 Korea University Creative Challenge, the NEXTGEN Campus AIGC Creation Competition in China and the Global 4K Short Film Creative Contest — held throughout the first half of this year. The competitions were designed to encourage creators to transform ideas into cinematic‑quality visual content using Kling AI's video‑generation models. Together, the university contests attracted more than 12,700 submissions from nearly 30 universities across Korea and China, while the global 4K competition, open to creators worldwide, drew entries from about 9,000 creators. “We have always believ

Jul 7, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Kling AI spotlights advances in AI video through global competition
Tech & Science

Naver, Daum ramp up AI search race with agent-focused strategies

Naver and Daum are intensifying competition in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search, moving beyond chatbot-style responses toward agent-driven systems that leverage their proprietary data and service ecosystems to execute real-world tasks. Naver recently unveiled the road map for its conversational AI search service AI Tab, which launched for all users in late June, positioning it as a gateway to AI agents capable of handling tasks such as reservations and shopping. The company identified a product-native large language model (LLM), harness engineering and multimodal AI as three core technologies behind the strategy. Unlike conventional foundation models built for general-purpose reasoning, Naver said its product-native LLM is tailored for real-world services. The model is designed to handle long-context, multiturn interactions while selecting appropriate tools to complete tasks across Naver’s ecosystem, including search, shopping, maps, blogs and community platforms. Harness engineering connects the AI to Naver’s real-time data sources, including blogs, maps, shopping and new

Jul 7, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Naver, Daum ramp up AI search race with agent-focused strategies
Tech & Science

Samsung Electronics' Q2 profit tops Nvidia's record on AI chip boom

Samsung Electronics once again projected record-breaking earnings for the second quarter, Tuesday, forecasting an operating profit of 89.4 trillion won ($58.4 billion) and 171 trillion won in sales in its earnings guidance, driven by a global boom in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. The company said its operating profit is estimated to have surged 1,810.3 percent from a year earlier and 56.2 percent from the previous quarter, while sales also jumped 129.3 percent year-over-year and 27.7 percent from the first quarter. The earnings estimate surpasses Samsung’s previous record quarterly operating profit of 57.23 trillion won in the first quarter of this year, extending its unprecedented streak to a third consecutive quarter of record revenue and operating profit. The second-quarter operating profit alone exceeded the company’s combined operating profit over the past three years, which totaled 82.9 trillion won — 6.57 trillion won in 2023, 32.7 trillion won in 2024 and 43.6 trillion won in 2025. The results also surpass the record quarterly operating profits posted by tw

Jul 7, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Samsung Electronics' Q2 profit tops Nvidia's record on AI chip boom
Tech & Science

Gwangju Airport site chosen for southwestern chip hub

An airport in Gwangju has been selected as the site for a new semiconductor cluster, Cheong Wa Dae said Monday. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are expected to build facilities there as part of the government’s megaprojects aimed at expanding the country's chip manufacturing capacity. The Gwangju Airport location was chosen during a meeting of officials from relevant government organizations and executives from the companies, which was held a week after the chip giants announced their massive investment plan totaling 800 trillion won ($522 billion) for the cluster. Gwangju Airport has both civilian and military functions, with civilian aircraft operating only domestic routes. Discussions have been ongoing about relocating the airport's operations to Muan, South Jeolla Province. “Among the shortlisted candidate sites in the southwestern region, the companies said the airport site is the most suitable one,” presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said in a press briefing. He explained that the airport site offers the strongest advantages due to its flattened terrain and strong tra

Jul 6, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Gwangju Airport site chosen for southwestern chip hub
Tech & Science

Mobile phone activation rules tighten Monday with facial recognition option

The government will require stricter identity verification for new mobile subscriptions starting Monday, including facial recognition or digital ID authentication, as part of a broader effort to combat identity theft, illegal phone registrations and voice phishing. Under the new procedures, users signing up for a new line or switching carriers must verify their identity using facial recognition, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety's mobile ID app or a certified copy of their resident registration record issued on the same day. For users who either fail facial recognition or do not wish to use biometric authentication, carriers can use nonfacial recognition alternative methods to approve and proceed with conditional activation. The new rules will apply across all channels, including carrier stores, third-party retailers and online platforms, covering both major telecom operators and mobile virtual network operators. The strengthened verification does not apply to customers upgrading devices with the same carrier. The measures aim to prevent fraudulent mobile activations using stolen id

Jul 5, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
Mobile phone activation rules tighten Monday with facial recognition option
Tech & Science

SK Telecom plans 15GW AI data center buildout across Korea by 2035

SK Telecom on Sunday announced its plan to develop up to 15 gigawatts of artificial intelligence (AI) data center capacity nationwide, aiming to position Korea as a leading AI infrastructure hub in Asia. The initiative comes as surging demand for AI model training and inference is driving an unprecedented need for high-performance computing infrastructure. The company said it will advance the project in alignment with the government’s AI G3 goal, reviewing power, site and operational requirements. "The AI data center initiative is designed to proactively prepare the computing infrastructure needed for the global AI ecosystem," SK Telecom CEO Jung Jai-hun said. "We will work closely with the government, industry and local communities to help establish Korea as Asia's leading AI infrastructure hub." The telecom will take a phased approach, beginning with its first AI data center in Ulsan, currently under construction, and expanding into a broader cluster exceeding 2 gigawatts across the southeastern region. It aims to use the cluster as a foothold to attract global tech giants seeking to

Jul 5, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
SK Telecom plans 15GW AI data center buildout across Korea by 2035
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