Starlink launches in Korea with focus on ships, planes

SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink launched in South Korea on Thursday, opening nationwide residential and enterprise subscriptions and marking the country’s official entry into the low Earth orbit, or LEO, broadband era. Service sign-ups began through Starlink Korea’s website, with the residential plan priced at 87,000 won ($59) per month, offering unlimited data and expected speeds of 135 megabits per second for downloads and 40 Mbps for uploads. Hardware installation is priced at 55

Dec. 4, 2025

Samsung's GDDR7 wins Presidential Prize as key memory in AI era

Samsung’s 24-gigabit GDDR7 DRAM, introduced in late 2024, has received South Korea’s top government technology award just as it nears commercial deployment in next-generation graphics processing units and artificial intelligence systems. Awarded the Presidential Prize at the 2025 Korea Tech Festival on Wednesday, Samsung’s chip is recognized for both technical innovation and its growing role in the AI hardware market. Built on a 12-nanometer process, the GDDR7 chip delivers a peak bandwidth of 4

Dec. 3, 2025

LG Innotek to showcase auto tech vision at CES 2026

LG Innotek will use CES 2026 to introduce a more consumer-facing vision of its automotive technology, unveiling integrated systems for autonomous driving and electric vehicles that go beyond its traditional role as a camera component supplier for global device brands like Apple. The company said Wednesday that it plans to install two full-scale vehicle mockups at the entrance of the Las Vegas Convention Center West Hall during CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, which runs from

Dec. 3, 2025

Digital crime overtakes other gang-related violence in Korea for first time, police say

For the first time, members of South Korean gangs are being arrested more for online scams than crimes such as assault or extortion as organized crime rapidly migrates to cyberspace. According to figures released by the Korean National Police Agency this week, 2,363 organized crime members were arrested in 2024. Among those, 56.3 percent — 1,330 individuals — were tied to digital crimes such as voice phishing, romance scams and illegal online gambling. The data was obtained by Rep. Suh Bum-soo o

Nov. 28, 2025

Why Korea’s 900-year-old shipwreck bowls look suspiciously new

When South Korean archaeologists announced on Nov. 10 that they had raised a 15th-century tax ship from the seabed off the western coast of Taean, photographs of another find from the same waters also drew major attention. Next to the Joseon-era (1392-1910) vessel known as Mado 4, divers had located two tightly stacked bundles of celadon from the Goryeo Kingdom (935-1392), 87 pieces in total, believed to date from around 1150 to 1175. After basic cleaning, the bowls and cups were presented to th

Nov. 27, 2025

More vocational high school grads choose college over immediate jobs

Fewer South Korean vocational high school graduates are heading straight into the workforce, as more turn to college in hopes of improving their long-term job prospects. According to a national survey released Tuesday by the Ministry of Education and the Korean Educational Development Institute, a record 49.2 percent of vocational high school graduates went on to tertiary education, continuing a five-year rise from 45 percent in 2021. Of those who did not pursue further studies and sought employ

Nov. 26, 2025

75% of South Koreans say migrants who pay taxes should get equal access to welfare: survey

A majority of South Koreans believe that migrants who pay taxes should be included in the country’s social welfare system, according to new national survey data released this week. The 2025 Human Rights Awareness Survey, published by Korea’s National Human Rights Commission on Tuesday, found that nearly 75 percent (74.7 percent) of respondents supported allowing taxpaying migrants to access the same social benefits as Korean citizens, a level of support that has remained largely unchanged from p

Nov. 26, 2025

9 in 10 university students use AI for study, 6 in 10 worry it’s dulling their thinking: survey

Artificial intelligence has already become central to academic life at South Korean universities, used by the overwhelming majority of students for research and writing. Yet at the same time, many students are expressing concern that it may be weakening their ability to think critically. A 2024 national survey of 726 students at four-year universities, conducted by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training and published in September this year, found that 91.7 percent had

Nov. 25, 2025

Legalizing same-sex marriage is still unpopular in South Korea. But does it need to be popular?

South Korea made a quiet but meaningful policy change in October. For the first time, the national census now allows same-sex couples living together to identify each other as “spouse” in official records. While this adjustment does not confer any legal rights, it marks a symbolic step in recognizing LGBTQ+ households in the state’s demographic data. But as same-sex couples slowly appear in national statistics, legal marriage still remains out of reach. And public support for it is not growing.

Nov. 22, 2025

More Korean mothers working, but many experience 'career break' of decade or longer

Even as a record-high proportion of South Korean women remain employed while married and raising children, government data showed Thursday that over 40 percent of women who pause their careers do not return to the workplace for at least 10 years. According to the Ministry of Data and Statistics, 64.3 percent of married women aged 15 to 54 who live with children under 18 were employed in the first half of 2025. The figure was up 1.9 percentage points from a year earlier and marked the highest fir

Nov. 21, 2025