South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. is expected to unveil a near 40-percent jump in cash dividends this week, industry sources said Sunday, following such decisions by Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. Samsung had paid out a total of 2.16 trillion won ($1.99 billion) in dividends to its shareholders for 2013, or 14,300 won per share, according to the sources. They said that the...

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., the world's second-biggest shipyard, has signed deals worth a combined $800 million to build four liquefied natural gas carriers, the shipbuilder said Thursday. Under the deals signed Wednesday with Korea Line Corp. and Hyundai LNG Shipping Co., the shipbuilder will deliver the LNG carriers by May 2017, the company said in an e-mailed statement. The...

KT&G Corp., South Korea's state-run tobacco producer, said Thursday its net profit jumped 45.5 percent in 2014 from a year earlier, driven by an increase in domesticsales ahead of a sharp price hike. Net income came to 813.8 billion won ($751.9 million) last year, compared with 559.3 billion won in 2013, the company said in a regulatory filing. Operating profit went up 15.6 percent on-year to 1...

South Korea's No. 2 tech giant, LG Electronics Inc., said Thursday that it will roll out its latest version of its curved-smartphone lineup on its home turf later this month and gradually expand its sales to overseas markets. The G Flex 2, with a Full HD 5.5-inch display, will become LG's second smartphone that boasts a display curving inward from top to bottom and slightly from right to left bu...

South Korea's No. 2 tech giant, LG Electronics Inc., is estimated to have posted a 25 percent gain in its smartphone sales last year from a year earlier, industry sources said Thursday, taking a step closer to claiming the third spot in the global market. The combined smartphone shipment of LG Electronics is estimated at 59.6 million units for 2014, up from the 47.6 million units posted a year e...

Hyundai Motor Co.'s labor union said Wednesday it will appeal against a recent court ruling unfavorable to the automaker's employees that said the company should include bonuses as ordinary wages for some workers. Last week, the Seoul Central District Court ordered Hyundai Motor, the country's top automaker, to count regular bonuses as part of ordinary salaries only for some employees and to pay...

Microsoft Korea rolled out its first machine-learning tool in South Korea on Wednesday as the firm moves to expand clout in advanced technology based on fast-growing cloud computing systems. Azure machine-learning, which runs on Microsoft's namesake cloud system, is an analysis platform developed by the U.S. software giant that offers predictions for a specific case set by the user. When a user...

Samsung Electronics Co., South Korea's largest firm by market value, has been considering splitting its stock to lower the high price tag of its shares but will look more into the long-term effect before making any decision, a senior executive said Tuesday. "(Samsung Electronics) has been looking into whether stock splits actually have a positive impact on the company's value," Lee Myung-jin, a ...

Hyundai Motor Co.'s Sonata plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) ranked fifth among the top eight "noteworthy" eco-friendly vehicles unveiled during this year's Detroit motor show, a U.S. eco car review website said Tuesday. The website ( www.hybridcars.com ) selected eight noteworthy eco-friendly cars unveiled during the motor show. The C350 PHEV of Mercedes-Benz, Acura NSX of Honda and Chev...

The number of passengers using international flights of South Korea's largest flag carrier, Korean Air Lines Co., dropped for the second straight year in 2014 in the face of intensifying competition from low-cost carriers, industry data showed Tuesday. According to the data provided by Incheon International Airport Corp. and Korea Airports Corp., about 16.6 million people used Korean Air's inter...

Moody's Investors Service, a global credit rating agency, said Monday the recent court ruling on ordinary wages for Hyundai Motor Co. employees is "credit positive" for the automaking giant since the resulting extra cost will be "manageable." On Friday, a Seoul court ordered Hyundai Motor to include regular bonuses as part of ordinary salaries for only a small number of employees, reducing the p...

Samsung Techwin Co., the defense and precision machinery unit of South Korea's largest conglomerate Samsung, said Monday that it has signed a deal with General Electric to provide airplane engine parts for the next 10 years. The deal calls for Samsung Techwin to provide 18 types of airplane engines parts from 2016 to 2025 to the U.S. company, which is one of the world's major airplane engine pro...

South Korean retail conglomerate Shinsegae on Monday said it plans to spend a record 3.4 trillion won (US$3.1 billion) this year as it readies to launch mega malls and gear up against the local arrival of e-commerce giants Amazon and Alibaba. The planned amount is roughly 50 percent higher compared with its 2.24 trillion won spending last year. It is also bigger than its previous record investme...

South Korea's tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. plans to sell 30 million units of Tizen-powered quantum-dot TVs in 2015, an industry source said Monday, as it fights to keep its top spot in global TV sales that it has maintained since 2006. The outlook came as the source with knowledge of inside matters said the company has planned to have Tizen models take up 50 percent of its combined TV sale...

Samsung Group, South Korea's top family-run conglomerate, is expected to spend 50 trillion won ($46.3 billion) for facility and R&D investment this year, a company official said, a similar amount from last year, following a reshuffle with its chairman, Lee Kun-hee, still sick in bed. Samsung is estimated to have invested between 49 trillion and 50 trillion won in 2014, according to market analys...