LG

LG Corporation (or LG Group), formerly known as Lucky Goldstar, is a South Korean multinational conglomerate founded by Koo In-hwoi in 1947 and managed by successive generations of his family. Headquartered in the LG Twin Towers building in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo District, in Seoul, it was the sixth-largest company in South Korea by revenue in 2023. LG develops, manufactures, and markets electronics, chemicals, household appliances, and telecommunications products. It operates subsidiaries in over 80 countries, including LG Electronics, Zenith, LG Display, LG Uplus, LG Innotek, LG Chem, LG Energy Solution, and LG AI Research.

History

LG Corporation was established as Lak Hui Chemical Industrial Corp. in 1947 by Koo In-hwoi.[3] Its first product was "Lucky Cream", the first Korean make-up cream.[4] In 1952, Lak Hui (pronounced "Lucky"; now LG Chem) became the first South Korean company to enter the plastics industry. As the company expanded its plastics business, it established GoldStar Co. Ltd. (now LG Electronics Inc.) in 1958. Both companies Lucky and GoldStar merged to form Lucky-Goldstar in 1983.[5]

GoldStar produced South Korea's first radio.[5] Many consumer electronics were sold under the brand name GoldStar, while some other household products (not available outside South Korea) were sold under the brand name of Lucky. The Lucky brand was famous for hygiene products such as soaps and HiTi laundry detergents, but the brand was mostly associated with its Lucky and Perioe toothpaste. LG continues to manufacture some of these products for the South Korean market.

Koo In-hwoi led the corporation until his death in 1969, at which time, his son Koo Cha-kyung took over. In 1995, he passed the leadership to his son, Koo Bon-moo. Koo Bon-moo renamed the company to LG in that year.[5] The company then trademarked the letters LG with the company's tagline "Life's Good". LG has owned the domain name LG.com since 2009. It had operated LG.co.kr since 1997.[6]

LG replaced its old logo with a new one on 30 December 2014, changing the wordmark font from Helvetica to LG Smart, the new custom corporate typeface of the company since 2013.

Koo Bon-moo died of a brain tumor on 20 May 2018.[7] In July 2018, it was announced that Koo Kwang-mo, the nephew and adopted son of Koo Bon-moo, will be the new CEO of LG. Koo Bon-moo adopted his nephew in 2004, after losing his only son in 1994,[8] citing "a family tradition of male-only succession".[9]

Corporate affairs

LG Corporation is a holding company that operates worldwide through more than 30 companies in the electronics, chemical, and telecom fields. It is headquarters in the LG Twin Towers building in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul.[14] Its electronics subsidiaries manufacture and sell products ranging from electronic and digital home appliances to televisions and mobile telephones, from thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal displays to security devices and semiconductors. In the chemical industry, subsidiaries manufacture and sell products including cosmetics, industrial textiles, rechargeable batteries and toner products, polycarbonates, medicines, and surface decorative materials. Its telecom products include long-distance and international phone services, mobile and broadband telecommunications services, as well as consulting and telemarketing services. LG also operates the Coca-Cola Korea Bottling Company, manages real estate, offers management consulting, and operates professional sports clubs.[15]

LG AI Research was launched in December 2021. In 2021, the company announced its first version of EXAONE.[16] In 2023, the company stated that the language model reduced costs by 78% by making inference faster and using memory more efficiently and multimodal model used more memory to improve content quality while significantly increasing inference speed, leading to a 66% cost reduction.[17]

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