What’s Up In Korea This Week? [Jul 16.]

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2013년 07월 16일 Sue J. Hur

Cyberattacks in Korea getting worse - a total of 67 targets came under attack

A total of 67 targets including public offices and companies came under cyber attacks since June 25, said the Korean government on Thursday. The types of attacks are usually DDoS (distributed denial of service) and malicious codes that destruct hard disk drives. In total (so far!), 14 organizations lost their stored data on hard disks due to the malicious code.

Most of the sites affected by the attacks have been normalized and officials are trying to track down the sources of the massive attacks.

Naver’s News-stand service failing?

NHN runs what is arguably South Korea’s biggest portal "Naver.com". And for those who remember, it kicked off its news aggregation service called “Naver News-stand” this April - the result? Traffic plunges, and complains from local news media. This is because:

Naver monopolizes the portal service market.
Their dominance has an 'absolute grip' on the online news service market in Korea.
So, most Korean users browse news on Naver’s PC and mobile platforms.
Users faced a completely new (read: difficult to use) interface and had to navigate through the news-stand not by the news article they wanted to read, but by the name of the news media (ie. 'Chosun Ilbo', 'ZDnet', etc.)

Local dailies are currently considering the option of establishing their own digital subscription. This means that they will pull out of Naver’s news service - so, NHN is seeing some setback at the moment. How will things turn out in the coming months? Only time will tell.

South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix signs cross-licensing deal

SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics have signed a cross-licensing deal recently. This means that they have (or at least are making an effort to) reduce the possibility of intellectual property feuds between the two.

This contract had apparently been in progress for a couple of years.

And it will allow the two South Korean companies to share technology and innovation ideas on semiconductors for an 'unspecified' amount of time in order to focus on technological advancement rather than to focus on IP disputes. The pair will also be able to form a united front against international competitions and reduce their dependence on external patents.

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