Guilty pleas for optical drive price fixing

Three South Korean executives have pleaded guilty to rigging bids and fixing prices of optical disk drives and agreed to serve prison terms in the United States, the Justice Department said.

Park Young-Keun, Kim Sang-Hun and Sik Hur, also known as Daniel Hur, took part in a price-fixing conspiracy between 2005 and 2009 while working for Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS), the department said in a statement.

According to US authorities, the three rigged bids for optical disk drives sold to US computer makers Dell and Hewlett-Packard and fixed prices for the devices sold to US software giant Microsoft.

HLDS is a joint venture between Japan's Hitachi and South Korea's LG Electronics. Optical disk drives such as CD-ROMs are frequently used in personal computers and game consoles.      More