Business World

Rupert Murdoch, head of media giant News Corp, met LG Electronics Inc executives in the South Korean capital on Wednesday, and was due to discuss news and movie content with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, according to sources and local media.

News Corp may be on the lookout for opportunities in the fast-changing South Korean media sector, where deregulation will open the door for major newspapers to expand into broadcasting, media reports have said.

LG Electronics confirmed that Murdoch, whose media empire includes The Wall Street Journal and Fox television, met executives including CEO Nam Yong to discuss “business matters.”

“We have no specific plans,” Nam told Reuters when asked what the talks had been about.

Murdoch was due later to meet Lee Jae-yong, son of former Samsung group chairman Lee Kun-hee, and Choi Gee-sung, head of digital media at Samsung, said an industry source, who asked not to be named.

Yonhap News earlier reported Murdoch and Samsung officials were expected to discuss selling news and movie content in South Korea through Samsung’s broadband TVs.

Murdoch was previously in Japan for talks with several corporate and political leaders, including Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, according to a source familiar with the matter but who was not authorized to talk to the media.

Murdoch said in August he was unhappy with Amazon.com’s control of relationships with newspaper subscribers for its Kindle electronic reader, and might seek a better deal with rival e-reader maker Sony Corp.

A spokesman for Samsung declined to confirm any plans related to News Corp. Sony officials would not confirm whether company executives met the media mogul.

A Dow Jones spokesman declined to provide details of Murdoch’s Asian schedule, but said “Mr. Murdoch is stopping in South Korea for a very brief, private visit en route to Beijing.”

Murdoch will also visit the Panmunjom truce village in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) on Thursday, a military official in Seoul said.

He is due to leave South Korea late on Thursday and head to China, where he will attend a media summit in Beijing later this week.

(Additional reporting by Kim Yeon-hee, Lee Chang-ho and Jon Herskovitz in SEOUL, editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Ian Geoghegan)

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