Hyundai Motor jumped into the heated global green car race by unveiling its ‘‘Ioniq” hybrid electric vehicle at a media preview event on Thursday. The event, held at its Namyang R&D center in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, came soon after it released a rendering of the model and started preorders early this week. The automaker said it plans to roll out Ioniq hybrid in the domestic market on Jan. 1...

Hyundai Motor Group vice chairman Chung Eui-sun has started the engine for the international debut of the G90 (EQ900 in Korea), the first vehicle under the firm’s newly created premium brand Genesis, as he flew to the U.S. on Tuesday. The Korean automotive group official said he would introduce the G90 at the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, better known as the Detroit Au...

Hanmi Pharmaceutical Group founder and chairman Lim Sung-ki has found himself in the public spotlight since announcing plans to distribute a portion of his personal stocks, worth some 110 billion won ($92.5 million), as a gift of gratitude to all his employees. The country’s largest drugmaker said Monday it is distributing 900,000 shares of the chairman’s common stocks in Hanmi Science, the hol...

With the imminent launch of a new centrist political party by Ahn Cheol-soo, the leading parties are accelerating their search for a game changer: a well-known and respected public figure who can unite their flock and engage swing voters; somebody like United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. So far, the ruling Saenuri Party appears to have the upper hand over the main opposition, the Minjo...

The political clock is ticking for President Park Geun-hye. With the next presidential race two years away, the incumbent state leader would normally have more time on her hands before entering her lame-duck period. But in reality, Park is under pressure to come up with impressive achievements by April’s general election. If not, she might lose the spotlight to potential presidential candidates...

Maestro Chung Myung-whun was met with howling cheers, applause and standing ovations from his local audience in the conductor’s final concert with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra on Wednesday night. The concert comes just one day after Chung submitted his official resignation as music director, citing the orchestra’s ongoing legal dispute regarding human rights violations by its former head as ...

Kim Yang-gon, a top North Korean official in charge of cross-border affairs, was killed in a car accident, the North’s state media reported Wednesday, drawing attention to the impact of his death on inter-Korean relations. He was 73. The North’s Korea Central News Agency said that Kim, a secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party and director of the party’s United Front Depa...

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won has revealed that he “has a child with another woman” and plans to divorce his wife Roh Soh-yeong, personally putting an end to the speculations surrounding his shaky marriage. In a three-page letter to the daily Segye Ilbo, which was confirmed by SK Group on Tuesday, Chey said his marriage with Roh “had been falling apart over the past 10 years” despite “several e...

Years of bitter feuding between Hyundai Elevator, the nation’s leading elevator manufacturer, and Schindler Group, its No. 2 shareholder, resurfaced on Monday after a top Swiss envoy had a rare meeting with Cheong Wa Dae officials requesting the government’s intervention. According to local reports, Swiss Ambassador to Korea Jorg Al. Reding recently met An Chong-bum, senior presidential secretar...

In South Korea where many family-run conglomerates hold the whip hand over much of the economy, the self-made billionaire Park Hyeon-joo’s bold step to create the country’s biggest brokerage has come into the spotlight after his successful bid to acquire KDB Daewoo Securities. When a consortium of Mirae Asset Securities and Mirae Asset Global Investments was chosen as the preferred bidder to tak...

ISLAMABAD (AP) _ India's Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Pakistan on Friday, his first such trip as prime minister to this Islamic nation that has been India's long-standing archrival in the region. The previously unannounced visit is a potential sign of thawing relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. The two heads of government also had an unscheduled meeting at the Paris clim...

After marathon 11-hour negotiations representatives of labor and the management of Hyundai Motor reached a tentative deal on wages Wednesday, ending months of internal conflicts that wobbled the nation’s largest automaker already facing lower-than-expected sales this year. The two sides agreed to raise 85,000 won in base salary and 300 percent of the salary plus 2 million won in bonus payment. W...

Kakao, Korea’s fast-sprawling mobile empire built on the omnipresent phone messaging service KakaoTalk, is in the public spotlight for fat paychecks. The KOSDAQ-listed firm was the highest-paying workplace among the top 100 companies by market capitalization in Korea last year, leading by a big margin a pack of older and larger corporate players such as Samsung Electronics. According to data co...

Yoo Il-ho, the nominee for Korea’s top economic post of deputy prime minister and finance minister, has vowed to carry on the legacy of his would-be predecessor, but the road ahead may require more, due to the multiple challenges the economy faces. “The global economic environment now is not very favorable, and navigating the local economy against this global backdrop will be a tough job,” Yoo, ...

Samsung Electronics vice chairman and heir apparent Lee Jae-yong is betting big on biotechnology, a move reminiscent of his father, chairman Lee Kun-hee’s entry into the chip business almost 40 years ago. In the 1970s, there was widespread skepticism about Samsung’s entry in the chip market that was dominated by U.S. and Japanese companies. But the company poured resources into ramping up quali...