LG Electronics

1958–1960s In 1958, LG Electronics was founded as GoldStar (). It was established in the aftermath of the Korean War to provide the rebuilding nation with domestically produced consumer electronics and home appliances. The start of the country's national broadcasting that created a booming electronics market and a close relationship it quickly forged with Hitachi helped GoldStar to produce South Korea's first radios, televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners. GoldStar was the electronics division of Lak-Hui (pronounced "Lucky") Chemical Industrial Corp. which is now LG Chem and LG Household & Health Care. GoldStar merged with Lucky Chemical and GoldStar Cable on 28 February 1995, changing the corporate name to Lucky-Goldstar and then finally to LG Electronics. 1970s–1990s Goldstar first went public in 1970; by 1976, it was producing one million televisions annually. In 1978, the company also surpassed USD 100 million in exports. In 1982, Goldstar opened its first overseas factory, which was based in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1994, GoldStar officially adopted the LG Electronics brand and a new corporate logo. In 1995, LG Electronics acquired the US-based TV manufacturer Zenith and absorbed it four years later. Also in that year, LG Electronics made the world's first CDMA digital mobile handsets and supplied Ameritech and GTE in the US, the LGC-330W digital cellular phone. The company was also awarded UL certification in the US. In 1998, LG developed the world's first 60-inch plasma TV and established a joint venture in 1999 with Philips LG.Philips LCD which now goes by the name LG Display. In 1999, LG Semiconductor merged with Hynix. 2000s–present LG Electronics had operated LGE.com in 2000. In order to create a holding company, the former LG Electronics was split off in 2002, with the "new" LG Electronics being spun off and the "old" LG Electronics changing its name to LG EI. It was then merged with and into LG CI in 2003 (the legal successor of the former LG Chem), so the company that started as GoldStar does not exist. In 2004, LG.Philips LCD completed an initial public offering and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Korea Exchange; it was later renamed LG Display. By 2005, LG was a Top 100 global brand and recorded a brand growth of 14% in 2006. As of 2009, its display manufacturing affiliate, LG Display, was the world's largest LCD panel manufacturer. LG Electronics has since continued to develop various electronic products, such as releasing the world's first 84-inch ultra-HD TV for retail sale. In 2010, LG Electronics entered the smartphone industry. In the same year, Ericsson acquired Nortel's controlling stake in LG-Nortel, a joint venture with LG Electronics, and the company was later renamed LG-Ericsson. In 2011, LG released the LG Optimus 2X, which Guinness World Records recognized as the first mobile phone to use a dual-core processor. On 5 December 2012, the antitrust regulators of the European Union fined LG Electronics and five other major companies (Samsung, Thomson since 2022 known as Vantiva, Matsushita which today is Panasonic Corp, Philips and Toshiba) for fixing prices of TV cathode-ray tubes in two cartels lasting nearly a decade. LG Electronics plays a large role in the global consumer electronics industry; it was the second-largest LCD TV manufacturer worldwide as of 2013.In 2013, LG established its Vehicle component business, marking a formal expansion into automotive electronics. On 11 June 2015, LG Electronics found itself in the midst of a human rights controversy when The Guardian published an article by Rosa Moreno, a former employee of an LG television assembly factory. Moreno was offered $3800 in compensation after losing both hands in an industrial accident while working for a subcontrator making parts for LG-branded flatscreen televisions. At the end of 2016, LG Electronics merged its German branch (situated in Ratingen) and European headquarter (situated in London) together in Eschborn, a suburb of Frankfurt am Main. In March 2017, LG Electronics was sued for its handling of hardware failures with recent smartphones such as the LG G4. Koo Bon-joon, who was the CEO and the current vice chairman of LG Electronics, was replaced by his nephew Koo Kwang-mo in July 2018 as CEO and vice chairman. The move came after the succession of Koo Kwang-mo as the chairman of the parent company LG Corporation who succeeded his adoptive father and uncle Koo Bon-moo after Bon-moo died of a brain tumor on 20 May 2018. LG announced in November 2018 that Hwang Jeong-hwan, who took the job as president of LG Mobile Communications in October 2017, will be replaced by Brian Kwon, who is head of LG's hugely profitable home entertainment business, from the 1st of December 2018. In 2018, LG Electronics acquired a 70 percent stake in Austrian automotive lighting company ZKW Group, while LG Corp. acquired the remaining 30 percent. Also in 2018, LG decided to stop smartphone production in South Korea to move production to Vietnam, in order to stay competitive. LG said Vietnam provides an "abundant labor force" and that 750 workers at its South Korean handset factory would be relocated to its home appliance plant. In 2020, LG Electronics ranked fourth among global applicants under the Patent Cooperation Treaty system, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.In the same year, LG began selling its rollable OLED television in South Korea. On 5 April 2021, LG announced its withdrawal from the phone manufacturing industry after continuous loss in the market. In 2020, LG faced a loss of 5 trillion won (US$4.4 billion).In July 2021, LG Electronics formed LG Magna e-Powertrain, a joint venture with Magna International focused on electric vehicle powertrain components, including motors, inverters and onboard chargers. In June 2021, the YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed published a video alleging an attempt by a representative of LG to manipulate the review of one of LG's gaming monitors. The representative, in an email shown in the video, attempts to influence the editorial outcome of the review by indicating testing methods and aspects of the display to be followed by the channel. This came a few months after a similar incident between the creators and Nvidia in which Nvidia warned them that if they continue emphasizing on rasterization rather than ray tracing in Nvidia's graphics cards, they would no longer receive review samples. Hardware Unboxed later stated that LG Electronics had contacted the channel and would change how it handled monitor reviews. As of 1 December 2021, the Chief Strategy Officer William Cho will take over for Bong-seok Kwon as the CEO of LG Electronics. In June 2022, LG acquired AppleMango, a South Korean EV charger manufacturer with a 60% purchase of the company's stocks The acquisition marked LG’s entry into the electric vehicle charging business. In that same month, the American publication Consumer Reports rated LG home appliances as the most reliable in the U.S. consumer market. In 2022 and 2023, two LG Electronics home appliance manufacturing facilities, LG Smart Park in Changwon, South Korea, and its plant in Tennessee, United States, were selected by the World Economic Forum as Lighthouse Factories. In April 2024, a security firm discovered security bugs in tens of thousands of LG smart TV models that could "let hackers hijack them". The vulnerability particularly affects smart TVs running LG's WebOS operating system from version 4 to version 7. The vulnerabilities had been reported to LG in November 2023, and LG released patches for the affected models on 22 March 2024, before the research was publicly disclosed. In December 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against LG and four other smart TV manufacturers, alleging that the companies were illegally "spying on Texans by secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes" using automated content recognition (ACR) technology. In January 2026, LG Electronics announced it would unveil an AI-powered home robot called LG CLOiD at CES 2026. The robot supports LG's "Zero Labor Home" vision and is designed to autonomously perform household tasks, coordinate connected appliances and interact naturally with residents. ==Corporate governance==