Seattle Daily Star

  The new single ‘Candy Sugar Pop’ has fans going wild on social media S outh Korean boy band Astro was trending on Twitter on Monday as the six-member group released its much-awaited third full album, Drive to the Starry Road . K-pop stars MJ, Jinjin, Cha Eun-woo, Moon Bin, Rocky and Yoon San-ha also released the new album’s single Candy Sugar Pop . A live stream of the full album and new single took place at 7pm Korea Standard Time (2pm UAE time) on Monday, the title track’s music video achieved more than 130,000 views within one hour. It’s an upbeat dance-pop track that plays on the theme of love in a whimsical fashion, enhanced by an impressive dance performance. The video features plenty of candy-themed details and bright colours. Astro fans, which are collectively called Arohas, were going wild for the song on social media. “So glad #ASTRO came back with a fun-funky catchy title track,” wrote one fan on Twitter. “MV [music video] surpassed 130k views in 1 hour. Keep st...

 Peer pressure might be a good thing for Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) . The $350 billion conglomerate’s 51% rise in quarterly operating profit underscores its dependence on memory chips. Local competitors Hyundai (005380.KS) , SK (034730.KS) and LG (003550.KS) are moving faster to capitalise on new markets. Maybe that’ll be a call to action. Strong demand for high-margin DRAM and NAND chips used in phones, PCs and data centre servers powered another strong quarter at South Korea’s biggest company. Operating profit in Samsung’s semiconductor division, which also houses smaller foundry and microprocessor businesses, surged 150% from a year earlier to $6.7 billion in the three months ending March 31. Chips stand apart at Samsung. Decent sales of its latest flagship Galaxy model weren’t enough to overcome other challenges in the mobile and devices unit, where operating profit tumbled 17% from a year earlier. Concerns about supply-chain snarls, weak memory prices and geopolitical ...