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    LG Electronics' Tennessee plant tops 10 mil. units in cumulative production

    LG Electronics’ Tennessee plant surpassed 10 million units in cumulative production, playing a pivotal role in helping the company secure the top spot in the U.S. laundry appliance market. The company said Sunday it held a ceremony to congratulate the production of the 10 millionth unit at the plant participated by local officials and LG Electronics executives. LG Electronics built its Tennessee plant on a 1.25 million-square-meter site in Clarksville, Tennessee in 2018. Since then, the company has invested approximately $500 million in expanding facilities and improving manufacturing processes. The plant began producing washing machines in November 2018, followed by dryers in 2022 and wash towers in 2023. Its annual production capacity now stands at 2.25 million units, more than four times its 2019 level, comprising 1.55 million washing machines and 700,000 dryers. The expansion has established the plant as LG Electronics’ key local manufacturing and supply hub. LG Electronics’ washing machines and dryers accounted for 17.2 percent and 17.4 percent of the U.S. market, respectively

    2 MIN READBy Nam Hyun-woo
    LG Electronics' Tennessee plant tops 10 mil. units in cumulative production
  • Companies

    SK chairman calls for AI expansion beyond chips into models, services

    2 MIN READBy Ko Dong-hwan
    SK chairman calls for AI expansion beyond chips into models, services
  • Business

    HD Hyundai launches autonomous vessel developed with Anduril

    1 MIN READBy Yonhap
    HD Hyundai launches autonomous vessel developed with Anduril
  • Companies

    Kia's domestic electrified vehicle sales top 300,000 units in 2026

    1 MIN READBy Yonhap
    Kia's domestic electrified vehicle sales top 300,000 units in 2026
  • Companies

    Audi Korea accelerates recovery on solid sales of redesigned A6

    2 MIN READBy Lee Min-hyung
    Audi Korea accelerates recovery on solid sales of redesigned A6
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CEO & Publisher: Oh Young-jinDigital News Email: webmaster@koreatimes.co.krTel: 02-724-2114Online newspaper registration No: 서울,아52844Date of registration: 2020.02.05Masthead: The Korea TimesCopyright © koreatimes.co.kr. All rights reserved.

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Companies

Worxphere bets big on baseball to win over Korean jobseekers

Human resources technology group Worxphere renewed its marketing partnership with the Hanwha Eagles baseball club for the 2026 season, extending a corporate sponsorship aimed at tapping into professional sports’ highly engaged fan bases. The agreement, signed by Worxphere CEO Yoon Hyun-jun and Hanwha Eagles General Manager Son Hyuk at Hanwha Life Eagles Park in Daejeon, marks the third consecutive year the artificial intelligence (AI)-driven HR firm has aligned with the Korea Baseball Organization franchise. Under the terms of the deal, Eagles players will wear jerseys featuring corporate patches for Worxphere’s flagship job recruitment platforms, JobKorea and Albamon. Worxphere has also secured extensive stadium branding to position the dual platforms under its corporate umbrella, a standard but increasingly competitive customer acquisition strategy in Korean sports. The partnership relies heavily on experiential marketing to bridge digital services with physical consumers. At a recent promotional event dubbed "Worxphere Day," the company staged a viral recruitment stunt via Albamo

Jun 12, 2026By Jhoo Dong-chan
Worxphere bets big on baseball to win over Korean jobseekers
Companies

Korea's Hanmi Semiconductor to acquire shares of SpaceX

Korea's Hanmi Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing Friday that it is seeking to acquire 50 billion won ($32.9 million) worth of shares in SpaceX, ahead of the U.S. space company's stock market debut. The investment, equivalent to around 7.24 percent of equity, comes amid the company's prospects on the "growth potential of Elon Musk's Terrafab and SpaceX, amid an explosive demand on advanced chips, aerospace and satellite technologies and artificial intelligence (AI)," according to the filing. Terrafab is a vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing complex spearheaded by Musk, involving Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, an AI company founded by the U.S. billionaire. The facility is expected to start operations in 2028. Some 80 percent of chips produced from there will be used in data centers of SpaceX, while the rest will be topped on vehicles of Tesla as well as its Optimus robots. "We will reinvest the expected future returns into our core semiconductor equipment business to seek sustainable growth, while enhancing shareholder value," an official from the Korean company said. SpaceX is

Jun 12, 2026By Yonhap
Korea's Hanmi Semiconductor to acquire shares of SpaceX
Companies

Fair trade watchdog approves NS Shopping's takeover of Homeplus Express

Korea's antitrust watchdog on Friday approved NS Shopping's takeover of the compact-format supermarket chain Homeplus Express, saying the deal is unlikely to hinder fair competition in the market. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) made the ruling after NS Shopping, an affiliate of Harim, Korea's largest poultry-processing company, announced its plan to acquire Homeplus Express from Homeplus in a deal estimated at 120.6 billion won ($79.3 million). Homeplus Express is the super supermarket (SSM) brand of Homeplus. The FTC said it had reviewed the deal as involving 11 vertical mergers and two conglomerate mergers. A vertical merger occurs when companies operate at different stages of the same supply chain within an industry, while a conglomerate merger occurs between businesses in different industries. The watchdog said it had determined that concerns over the merger's impact on competition remain limited, given Homeplus Express' relatively small market presence. "In terms of chicken products, Homeplus Express' share of the SSM market remains low, at around 2 percent," the FTC said. "It is unli

Jun 12, 2026By Yonhap
Fair trade watchdog approves NS Shopping's takeover of Homeplus Express
Banking & Finance

Securities firms' Q1 net spikes 77% on increased commission income

Securities companies in South Korea saw their net profit soar 77 percent in the first quarter of the year largely due to increased commission income from the sharp increase in stock trading, data showed Friday. The combined net profit of 61 domestic securities firms came to 4.33 trillion won ($2.83 billion) in the January-March period, compared with 2.44 trillion won a year earlier, according to the data from the Financial Supervisory Service. The companies' combined income from commission fees almost doubled to 6.69 trillion won in the first quarter from 3.33 trillion won a year earlier, aided by a surge in stock trading, while their combined income from their own investment or stock trading gained 31 percent to 4.1 trillion won over the cited period. In the January-March period, stock turnover came in at 2,775 trillion won, sharply up from the previous year's 641 trillion won, according to the watchdog. Their combined assets had stood at 1,098.4 trillion won as of end-March, up 154 trillion won, or 16.3 percent, from three months earlier, and debts gained 26.8 percent to 991.5 trillion

Jun 12, 2026By Yonhap
Securities firms' Q1 net spikes 77% on increased commission income
Tech & Science

AI model rivalry expands into defense sector

Artificial intelligence (AI) competition is expanding into the defense sector as domestic tech firms pivot to military applications, leveraging proprietary models and infrastructure in a market where security and data sovereignty are paramount. The shift comes as Naver Cloud and NC AI move beyond the government-led foundation model competition to target a fast-forming defense AI market. Naver Cloud held a seminar on Wednesday and unveiled its strategy for sovereign AI-based defense AI transformation (AX) advancement, outlining practical pathways to deploy AI in real-world military operations. The move follows the company’s launch earlier this month of a dedicated task force for defense AI adoption, marking its first standalone organization focused exclusively on military applications. The team, under company CEO Kim Yu-won, brings together business development, strategy, engineering and deployment personnel to accelerate military AI projects. The company is positioning itself as more than a model provider, aiming instead to build a full-stack Korean defense AI platform. By combining its

Jun 12, 2026By Lee Gyu-lee
AI model rivalry expands into defense sector
Companies

Hanwha Ocean selected as preferred bidder for KDDX program

Hanwha Ocean has been selected as the preferred bidder for Korea’s long-delayed next-generation destroyer (KDDX) project, a cornerstone of the country’s naval modernization plan, valued at approximately 7.8 trillion won ($5 billion). The KDDX program plans to deploy six 6,000-ton Aegis-equipped destroyers by 2030, replacing aging vessels scheduled for retirement in the late 2020s. According to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) and defense industry sources on Thursday, the agency has completed its evaluation of proposals for the detailed design and lead ship construction project and notified both HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and Hanwha Ocean of the results in the afternoon of the same day. “We received an excellent evaluation in the proposal assessment for the detailed design and lead ship construction project of the KDDX, thanks to our advanced naval vessel technology and project execution capabilities," the company said in a press statement following DAPA’s decision. “As the preferred bidder, we will closely cooperate with DAPA in accordance with proje

Jun 11, 2026By Ko Dong-hwan
Hanwha Ocean selected as preferred bidder for KDDX program
Companies

PHOTO Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in US

Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) Chairman Ryu Jin, on screen, delivers opening remarks at the Congressional Baseball Game for Charity at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., Wednesday (local time). FKI participated in the game as a sponsor and sent a delegation of executives from major Korean investors in the United States, including Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, LG, POSCO Group, HD Hyundai, LS and KBI Group. Courtesy of FKI

Jun 11, 2026By Nam Hyun-woophoto
[PHOTO] Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in US
Companies

Cheering at work: How companies are preparing for 2026 World Cup

The World Cup is a key cultural event for many Koreans, who use the global football tournament as a chance to take a break from their busy schedules as they gather with friends and colleagues — especially when the matches take place in the evening. This time, however, many matches of the North America-hosted tournament, which starts Friday morning (Korea time), are taking place during morning hours here, including the Korean national team's games. The situation has led some companies to organize office viewing events and use the time for corporate team building. E-Land World, a fashion retailer, will host a viewing event in the auditorium of its Seoul headquarters, where roughly 400 employees are expected to watch Korea’s match against the Czech Republic on Friday. As the match kicks off at 11 a.m., the company plans to provide employees with fried chicken lunch boxes. It will decide whether to continue hosting events for the remaining Korean matches after talking with participating workers. GS Retail, the operator of the convenience store chain GS25, is also launching an in-house ev

Jun 11, 2026By Park Ji-won
Cheering at work: How companies are preparing for 2026 World Cup
Companies

SK to build AI data center in Japan amid gov’t push for domestic investment

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won's recent moves in Japan have raised fresh questions about whether the group's investment strategy runs counter to the government's push for major technology firms to expand investment in Korea's regional economies. In an interview with the Nihon Keizai Shimbun published on Thursday, Chey said SK is planning to build an artificial intelligence (AI) factory in Japan “in a timeline between 2028 and 2029.” He also said SK hynix could review plans to establish overseas production bases if additional memory fabrication capacity is required in the future. Describing Japan as “a very strong candidate,” Chey noted that the country has a well-established semiconductor ecosystem with a high concentration of equipment and materials companies. The remarks came at a time when the Lee Jae Myung administration is intensifying efforts to attract major technology investments to regional areas, particularly the Honam region — encompassing Gwangju and the South and North Jeolla provinces — a traditional stronghold of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK). A da

Jun 11, 2026By Nam Hyun-woo
SK to build AI data center in Japan amid gov’t push for domestic investment
Banking & Finance

Global insurers call for cross-border cooperation to tackle evolving risks, widening protection gaps

Artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous technologies are rewriting the rules of risk, while more frequent climate-related disasters and geopolitical tensions are making that risk harder to predict and quantify. Those shifts have left insurers grappling with questions that extend well beyond traditional underwriting and claims management: how to price emerging risks, how to narrow widening protection gaps and how to remain relevant as the nature of risk itself evolves. Against this backdrop, more than 1,300 insurance executives, risk specialists and technology leaders representing 175 companies from around the world convened in Seoul this week for the Korea International Insurance Conference (KIIC). The two-day event, held at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas with Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance as lead sponsor, was built around a theme that encapsulated those concerns: “Insuring the Future in a Changing Risk Landscape.” Opening KIIC’s main session on Thursday, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance CEO Lee Mun-hwa remarked that the industry must move beyond its traditional role

Jun 11, 2026By Park Han-sol
Global insurers call for cross-border cooperation to tackle evolving risks, widening protection gaps
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