NEWS BRIEF

[Anchor Lead]

Samsung Electronics announced today that in collaboration with University of California Santa Barbara, it succeeded in demonstrating a 6G terahertz wireless communications system. The prototype system explores the potential of terahertz spectrum application for 6G wireless communications that aims for the peak data rate of 1 terabit per second, which is 50 times faster than 5G with the maximum data transmission speed of 20 gigabits per second. Once the 6G system is commercialized, it would dramatically improve communication capacity to enable new services such as extended reality for mobile devices.
The Bank of Korea announced today that foreign currency savings by individuals and corporations amounted to 94.83 billion dollars as of the end of May. This is about 100 million dollars less than a record high of nearly 95 billion dollars set two months ago. However, the deposits in U.S. dollar, which account for the largest portion of foreign currency deposits, are at their peak. A BOK official said that the won-dollar exchange rate in May remained more or less stable, falling only 1.4 won, which resulted in very few foreign currency transactions.
Market research firm DMC Media reported today that Korea’s social media usage ranked second in the world with 89%, about 1.7 times higher than the global average of 53.6%. The United Arab Emirates took first place with 99% and Taiwan, which rated second last year, slipped to third place with 88.1%. Meanwhile, in Korea, YouTube saw the most number of unique visitors with roughly 37.6 million unique viewers, followed by Band, Instagram and Facebook. DMC Media explained that Koreans’ use of social media grew 13.6% since last year when the COVID-19 pandemic gave a boost to the social media market.