Hasta La Gadget!

Here’s an odd one. Samsung, which has been known to be on better-than-average terms with the South Korean government in the past, is launching independent investigations in response to reports that “toxic materials used in chip making may have caused cancer in some of its employees.” In one of the more bizarre stories of the year, Samsung has recently come under fire from social and civic groups to actually look into the incidents, which were reported over a decade ago but were found to not be Sammy’s fault by the aforesaid government. This week, the company admitted that 22 of its employees (who worked at a chip facility outside of Seoul) had been diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma, and 10 of them had perished. Cho Soo-in, president of Samsung’s memory division, told the media that the firm is “deeply sorry about the loss of loved ones,” and that it “actively cooperated on epidemiologic investigations, which concluded there were no leaks of radiation.” We’ve got a feeling we know exactly what will be concluded here, but we’ll certainly keep an ear to the ground for anything atypical.

Samsung launches investigation of chip lines following cancer allegations originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seems like China and the UK aren’t the only countries worried about their kid’s computing habits. According to the BBC, the South Korean government is currently mulling over plans to regulate just how much time — and at what time — kids play video games. It seems that a number of services are ready to follow through with suggestions made by the country’s Ministry of Culture, including: Maple Story, Mabinogi (no access granted to school-age gamers between midnight and 8 am) and Dungeon and Fighter (slowing down user’s connection after they’ve been logged in for a certain period of time). Nineteen games are said to be included in total, which is a significant portion of the country’s online gaming market. This will inevitably force kids to build their own underground games on disused servers, like Chia and her friends did in William Gibson’s Idoru. They’ll need to do something with those 1Gbps connections, right?

South Korea seeks to impose gaming curfew, makes computers ‘edgy’ and ‘cool’ in the process originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“[The] best companies in the world are collapsing. We don’t know what is going to happen to Samsung too. In the coming 10 years, businesses and products that represent Samsung today will mostly disappear.”

Never mind that analysts are predicting the most profitable year ever for Samsung Electronics. So what’ll it be South Korea: BubiBubi or pitchforks?

Lee Kun-hee returns as chief of Samsung Electronics originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Eternal archrivals-to-the-death Samsung and LG have a tendency to match one another tit for tat in virtually every consumer electronic category, but for whatever reason, LG’s been far less interested in going for broke with Android over the past year — though a preoccupation with Windows Phone 7 Series is a solid guess at this point. Things may be changing, though, now that we’ve got news out of Telecoms Korea that they’re prepping a more brutal assault than the weakling GW620 could ever provide in the form of a so-called LU2300 for the domestic market (we’re assuming the actual thing will be a little more… well, “designed” than the snow-white mockup above). The site is playing up LG’s announcement that the phone will bundle a bunch of popular apps in ROM (awesome?) but the real news is the impressive spec sheet, which is said to include a Nexus One-like 1GHz Snapdragon and WVGA AMOLED display paired with Android 2.1 and a 5 megapixel cam capable of 720p video. It certainly sounds like it’s ready to give Samsung’s M100S a run for its money, but we’ll need to wait until its second quarter release to know for sure.

LG’s LU2300 set to challenge Samsung’s M100S for Korean Android dominance? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple and HTC might each be trying to patent a fancy capacitive stylus, but it looks like the good people of South Korea have stumbled on a decidedly more low-tech (and delicious) solution to using their phones in the winter: sausages. Apparently snack sausages from the CJ Corporation are electrostatically compatible with the iPhone’s capacitive touchscreen, leading many to use them as a “meat stylus” in the cold weather, rather than remove a glove. And it’s not just a joke; apparently South Korean snack sausage sales are soaring. We don’t know if anyone’s managed to combine this bit of amazing hackery with the bacon iPod sleeve yet, but we do know that we just registered meatstylus.com — anyone care to send in some local sausage test results?

South Korean iPhone users turn to sausages as a cold weather ‘meat stylus’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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