South Korea's IT export for November rose 3.3 percent compared to a year ago thanks to semiconductors and displays, the country's trade ministry has said. The rise ends 14 straight months of decline caused by the rise of Chinese competitors and the global economic downturn. Total IT export for the month was $14.8 billion, a rise of 3.3 percent from a year ago, while import was $8.08 billion, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said. BlackBerry licenses brand to Chinese phone maker TCL APAC users concerned about lack of safety standards in driverless vehicles Fujitsu secures 32 million euro deal to push Finnish smart healthcare projects No foreign ownership issues in TPG's path to becoming fourth Singapore telco Semiconductors contributed the lion's share with $5.79 billion, a rise of 11.6 percent year-on-year, thanks to rise in demand in mobile and servers and the price rise of DRAMs and NAND flashes. Displays marked $2.47 billion, an increase of 3.1 percent, thanks to large demand for OLED panels and rising prices.

South Korea will create laws for a data exchange where people can buy and sell data for fair market prices, the country's IT ministry has said. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said it will make new regulations to oversee the creation of and support for a data exchange and data free-zones. The creation of these will allow better data protection and pricing, it said, and will prepare for the coming "intelligent information society" driven by the fourth industrial revolution and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. "Each data saved on mobile or Internet of Things devices are small in themselves, but they become an AI-based big data service when put together," said Kwon Yong-hyun, head of planning for the ministry's intelligent information society task force. "There are strong opinions that it is unfair for only big data companies, who gather these data, to earn profits."