Most Popular
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Harris, Trump face off as North Korea tests US on Election Day
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After opposition U-turn, Korea to repeal plan for financial capital gains tax
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[Out of the Shadows] Seoul room clubs offer drugs to compete for clientele
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North Korea fires ballistic missiles hours before US Election Day
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Amid record-low approval rating, Yoon forgoes Assembly budget address
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Local food festivals enjoy unexpected popularity as snacks go viral
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South Korea and Central Asia set stage for first summit
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Seoul eyes expanding foreign caregiver pilot program
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‘Children have the right to great stories': Head of Astrid Lindgren Award stands firm against book ban
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Ruling party leader condemns North Korea troop dispatch as crime against humanity
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Limited impact expected from ease of short selling restriction on stocks
Analysts expected a partial lifting of South Korea’s ban on short selling of large-cap stocks on the Kospi 200 and Kosdaq 150 indexes on Monday will have a limited impact on the market. The country is set to ease bans on the indexes about 14 months after it imposed the restriction to protect investors from a sudden market fall triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brushing aside retail investors’ concerns over a possible drop in stock prices, market watchers the equity market is un
May 2, 2021
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Woori to launch comprehensive mobile payment solution
South Korea’s Woori Financial Group said Sunday it has decided to launch a comprehensive mobile payment solution platform to establish ground in the digital payment market, currently dominated by fintech firms. The solution will integrate and offer the payment services for all of the group’s subsidiaries and affiliates, including Woori Bank and Woori Card. Through the platform, the group is seeking to reach beyond its existing customers. It will grant access to users with no Woor
May 2, 2021
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NH NongHyup wins license to operate branch in Hong Kong
NH NongHyup Bank, one of South Korea’s five major banks, said Sunday that it has been granted a license to operate a branch in Hong Kong, taking a solid step towards global expansion. With the green light given by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority on Thursday, the lender will make a foray into Asia’s largest financial hub. NH NongHyup plans to launch its Hong Kong branch by the end of the year, after selecting the location of its headquarters, according to the firm. “Hong Ko
May 2, 2021
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[Top Investors] Park Hyun-joo, Korea’s Warren Buffett -- what’s his next move?
This is the first installment of a series of interviews with South Korea’s leading investors and strategists, and analyses of their insights on markets and future investment. -- Ed. Mirae Asset Financial Group Chairman Park Hyun-joo and his empire, one of South Korea’s largest asset management firms, were on a roller coaster ride last year as the group backed out of large acquisition deals and fought a series of lawsuits. Just six months before the pandemic hit the global market,
May 2, 2021
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HMM deploys one new ship to US to cope with soaring freight rates
South Korea's leading shipper, HMM Co., said Sunday it has deployed one additional ship to the United States to cope with soaring freight costs amid the new coronavirus pandemic. HMM said a 5,000 twenty-foot-equivalent unit (TEU) ship carrying local companies' containers departed from the southeastern port city of Busan earlier in the day and is expected to arrive at a port in Los Angeles on May 13. HMM has operated 21 temporary ships since August, with 15 covering US routes, to handle a shar
May 2, 2021
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Local craft beers gain popularity in S. Korea
South Korea's homegrown craft beer has increasingly gained popularity over recent years, industry data showed Sunday, as local brewers offer a wide range of flavors at competitive prices. The local craft beer market was valued at 118 billion won ($105.6 million) as of 2020, sharply up from 43.3 billion won in 2017, according to data by the Korea Craft Brewers' Association. Jeju Beer Company, based on the southern resort island of Jeju, was the nation's leading craft brewer, booking 33.5 billi
May 2, 2021
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Retail investors' stock ownership in Samsung Elec surpasses 10%
Retail investors' stock ownership in Samsung Electronics Co., South Korea's most valuable company, surpassed 10 percent for the first time as they went bargain hunting for its shares amid the COVID-19 pandemic last year, industry data showed Sunday. Individual investors owned a total of 65.3 million common shares of Samsung Electronics as of Friday, accounting for 10.1 percent of the total, according to industry data. The world's largest memory chip and smartphone vendor is valued at 486.5 tr
May 2, 2021
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S. Korea to partially lift ban on short selling after 14 months
South Korea's financial regulator is set to partially lift its ban on short selling of listed stocks this week, about 14 months after it imposed it to cope with a stock market rout triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting Monday, the ban on 200 large-cap firms listed on the main KOSPI and 150 firms listed on the secondary KOSDAQ will be lifted, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said. A total of 917 stocks are listed on the KOSPI, and 1,470 stocks are listed on the KOSDAQ. A ban o
May 2, 2021
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LG Group launches new holding firm LX Holdings
South Korean conglomerate LG Group has launched its new holding firm with about 8 trillion won ($7.1 billion) of assets as part of its restructuring plan, company officials said Sunday. The new holding firm named LX Holdings has five LG affiliates under its wing -- LG International Corp., LG Hausys Ltd., LG MMA Corp., Silicon Works Co. and Pantos Co. In November, LG Group decided to hive off some affiliates for Koo Bon-joon, an uncle of current LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo and a younger brot
May 2, 2021
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LG Uplus on lookout for automated seaports with 5G tech
BUSAN -- A towering shipyard crane nimbly moves over stacks of cargo crates at a terminal in Busan Port, South Korea's largest seaport 453 kilometers southeast of Seoul, to snatch a container box and gently load it onto a truck. While the scene is business as usual for the bustling port that processed over 410 million tons of cargo last year, the crane is unusual in that its driver's seat -- 25 meters off the ground -- is empty. The over 20-year-old industrial machine runs in semi-autonomous m
May 2, 2021
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Exports up for 6th month on upbeat shipments of chips, cars
South Korea's exports jumped 41.1 percent in April from a year earlier, the highest growth in around 10 years, as demand for chips and automobiles stayed strong amid the improving global economy, data showed Saturday. Outbound shipments came to $51.1 billion last month, compared with $36.2 billion a year earlier, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. It marked the sharpest on-year monthly growth since January 2011. Imports rose 33.9 percent to $50.8 bil
May 1, 2021
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[Weekender] The rise of curated fashion platforms
Having a lot of tabs open while browsing for clothes online? For a growing number of shoppers, those days are over. Similar to how going to a shopping mall with a wide range of brands seems more of a safe bet than having to travel between stores far apart from each other, more people in South Korea are turning to platforms like Musinsa and Zigzag -- algorithm-driven e-commerce fashion platforms where shoppers are presented with items from thousands of brands. Musinsa, which boasts some 6,000
May 1, 2021
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NFT to stick around with support from wider population: experts
Nonfungible tokens, widely known as NFTs, will survive a second wave and, even more, thrive as the public increasingly embraces this digital asset that has become more understandable and tangible, advocates said. Gathering for a panel session held by accelerator SparkLabs, industry experts from the US and Korea said Thursday that, unlike in 2017, there are more use cases of NFTs and people adopting their use. First appearing in 2014, an NFT is a blockchain-based nonduplicable digital certi
April 30, 2021
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S. Korea begins reviewing 1st blood plasma therapy for COVID-19
South Korea's drug safety agency said Friday that it has begun reviewing a plasma therapy treatment against the novel coronavirus by local biotech company GC Pharma for conditional approval. The plasma therapy, dubbed GC5131A, is a type of hyperimmune globulin drug that uses blood plasma taken from people who have fully recovered from COVID-19, according to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. If approved, the investigative drug will be the country's first blood plasma cure for the deadly d
April 30, 2021
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Renault Samsung workers hold strike amid pandemic
Unionized workers at Renault Samsung Motors Corp. held a strike at the company's sole domestic plant on Friday to demand a wage hike for the year of 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, the union said. Renault Samsung's 1,900-strong union staged a general strike at the Busan plant, 450 kilometers south of Seoul, as they are not satisfied with the company's proposals, a union spokesman said. The union demanded an increase of 71,687 won (US$64) in monthly basic pay and a bonus of 7 million wo
April 30, 2021
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Lee Jae-yong inherits 50% of Samsung Life shares
Lee Jae-yong, the eldest son of the late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, officially became the leader of the Samsung empire by inheriting 50 percent of his father’s stake in Samsung Life Insurance, the company’s regulatory filing showed Friday. Lee received more than 20 million shares of the life insurer, owning a 10.44 percent stake in the affiliate, according to the filing. Samsung C&T, the construction arm and de facto holding company of Samsung Group, remains the largest sh
April 30, 2021
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Early-stage investors say not just crypto but also blockchain becoming mainstream
Blockchain technology -- not just the cryptocurrencies that rely on it -- is becoming mainstream, as evidenced in the recent market debut of US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and nonfungible tokens gaining popularity, said advocates of digital assets on Thursday. “There are many promising blockchain companies but they are overshadowed by cryptocurrencies (for now),” said Lee Han-joo, the co-CEO of SparkLabs, a leading South Korean accelerator, at the company‘s demo day that
April 30, 2021
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Hard-line FSS chief to retire as fund fiasco remains unresolved
Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Yoon Suk-heun, known as a hard-line reformist of the financial industry, is set to retire next week without resolving a massive misselling scandal involving Korean hedge funds Lime Asset Management and Optimus Asset Management. Blamed for the watchdog’s lax oversight over the now-defunct hedge fund operators, it is unlikely that Yoon will continue to serve after his term ends on May 7, industry sources said. The alleged fraud cases caused investor los
April 30, 2021
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S. Korea's 5G users top 14m since commercialization
The number of 5G users in South Korea stood at over 14 million last month, two years after the networks first went live in the country, data showed Friday, as the country pushes to accelerate adoption of the latest generation networks. As of the end of March, 5G subscriptions stood at 14.48 million, accounting for 20 percent of the total 71.1 million mobile subscriptions in the country, according to data from the Ministry of Science and ICT. South Korea was the first country in the world to co
April 30, 2021
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[From the Scene] At Drone Show Korea 2021, everyone wants a slice in the sky
BUSAN -- Beneath the clear, open sky, hundreds of drones were on display at Drone Show Korea 2021, held Thursday at Bexco in Busan, where companies big and small gathered to suggest their vision for the future drone industry. In the case of national flag carrier Korean Air, the message was clear -- drone business is all about control. “Korean Air’s main focus is the (drone) air traffic control system because we have more than five decades of experience as an aircraft operator,&rdqu
April 30, 2021