By Koh Young-aah Seoul’s Gangnam area, on the southern side of the Han River, has emerged as a popular residential area for families of the country’s top 30 tycoons over the years, a research firm said in a report Wednesday. Seongbuk-dong and Hannam-dong, located in Gangbuk, north of the river, have historically been considered wealthy areas where most local conglomerate owners reside. The tre...

By Cho Ji-hyun LG Electronics announced its comeback Wednesday by getting back into the black, posting 13.15 trillion won ($12.19 billion) in sales and 130 billion won in operating profit for the first quarter of this year. In its quarterly earnings report, the company said total sales maintained a similar level to the same period last year, down 0.4 percent. However, its net loss during the te...

By Koh Young-aah Foreign retailers seeking to enter the Korean market should consider its unique traits and cultural differences to succeed, according to Richard Hwang, managing director of global commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield’s Korean unit. “A lot of global retailers have experienced failure here because they had little understanding of the market before entering it....

South Korean engineers successfully tested the world’s first operational automatic docking system between two large ships off the country’s southeastern coast, a state-run science and technology university said Tuesday. The test carried out in Busan, 453 kilometers southeast of Seoul, is an integral part of the larger “mobile harbor” project that aims to make it possible to speed up the loading ...

Samsung Group, South Korea’s top conglomerate, will build green-energy industrial facilities from 2021 in a new town to be created on west coastal tidal flats, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said Wednesday. Samsung signed a memorandum of understanding with the government to construct green-energy production facilities, a research institute and houses on a 11.5-square-kilometer plot in the Sae...

The South Korean economy grew 1.4 percent in the first quarter from three months earlier on sustained exports and improving domestic demand, the central bank said Wednesday. The first-quarter growth accelerated from a 0.5 percent on-quarter expansion seen in the fourth quarter of last year, according to an advance estimate by the Bank of Korea (BOK). The country's gross domestic product (GDP), t...

A presidential aide Tuesday urged the national pension and other public funds to avidly exercise their shareholder rights in order to keep larger companies in check. “Public funds exercising their shareholder rights (in large companies) are the most effective way to keep the large companies and their power in check,” said Kwak Seung-jun, head of the Presidential Council for Future and Vision at ...

South Korea and China have agreed to provide flight services between Seoul and Beijing in a move to reduce overall travel time, the transportation ministry said Tuesday. The two nations recently signed a memorandum of understanding to allow their airlines to offer direct flights between Gimpo International Airport, west of Seoul, and Beijing International Airport starting in July, the ministry s...

The number of South Korean travelers going overseas fell to a 16-month low in March, apparently due to the recent earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, the top destination for outbound tourists, data showed Tuesday. According to the data released by the Justice Ministry and the Korea Tourism Organization, the number of South Koreans going overseas came to 868,694 last month, down 8.6 percent fr...

The number of passengers using international air flights grew about 6 percent during the first quarter as people were bolstered to travel by the ongoing economic recovery, the transportation ministry said Tuesday. Passengers using international flights in and out of South Korea’s airports came to 10.13 million during the January-March period, up 5.8 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, ...