‘Double drop in business births and deaths undermine Korea’s potential growth’

South Korea’s top tobacco maker KT&G is expanding its social outreach to Indonesia, offering vocational training and programs on Korean culture and language in the Southeast Asian country. The company said Monday that it’s accepting applications to join the second round of job training at KT&G’s vocational training center at the Universitas Kristen Cipta Wacana in Malang city. Since opening its first session in March, the center offers a three-month professional se

The likes of Hermes and Dior bid to make themselves more approachable to younger consumers

Korean Air has operated 10,000 cargo-only passenger flights as of Sunday, the airline said on Monday, as it pivoted to the cargo business amid a decline in air travel demand during the pandemic. The airline first flew a passenger flight carrying only cargo on the Incheon-Ho Chi Minh route in March last year. Since then, it has operated such flights on 65 routes to North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, China and Japan, transporting 400,000 tons of cargo around the world. Some 40 tons of cargo

Kia Corp. on Monday released its first all-electric sedan EV6 in the domestic market ahead of its global launch set for later this year. The model has logged 30,000 preorders since March, 21,016 of which were on the first day of the offer. It was the South Korean automaker’s best-ever presale record. EV6, built on the company’s new EV platform E-GMP, has also seen strong demand in Europe, where it will be released later this year, and the US is set for a 2022 release, the company

Korea Aerospace Industries said Monday it had won a $78 million deal from Thailand to supply two T-50TH advanced trainer jets and provide support for their operation. The contract period is until Jan. 30, 2023. The deal, which follows a 274.4 billion-won ($237.8 million) deal KAI signed with Indonesia last month to supply six T-50i jets, raises the total T-50 series exports so far to 72 units -- 14 to Thailand, 22 to Indonesia, 12 to the Philippines and 24 to Iraq. T-50TH are advanced trai

Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co. beat its Japanese rival Toyota to become the world's largest fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) maker in the first half of the year with the release of a facelifted model, industry data showed Monday. Hyundai Motor, the maker of the NEXO SUV, sold about 4,700 units in the January-June period, up 62.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the data by SNE Research. Hyundai slipped to second place in the FCEV market in the first quarter, but it regained the t

Samsung Electronics Co. said Monday it will expand overseas sales of its wind-free air conditioner after the product posted robust sales in the first half of the year amid the pandemic-induced stay-at-home trend. The tech giant said its wind-free air conditioner sales outside South Korea jumped 75 percent in the first six months of 2021 from a year earlier. Samsung's wind-free air conditioner boasts a cooling technology that disperses cool air through a maximum of 270,000 micro air holes to en

Korea Aerospace Industries Co. (KAI), South Korea's sole aircraft manufacturer, said Monday it has received a $78 million deal to supply trainer jets to Thailand. Under the deal, KAI will supply two T-50TH advanced trainer jets to the Thailand air force by November 2023, the company said in a regulatory filing. KAI has achieved $400 million worth of deals to supply 16 T-50 trainer jets to date. KAI has exported 156 trainer jets worth US$3.1 billion -- 72 T-50 advanced trainer jets worth $2.6

Samsung Electronics Co. was the world's fifth-largest vendor of Chromebooks in the second quarter of the year, a report showed Monday, as the South Korean tech giant aims to expand its presence in the portable PC market amid the pandemic. Samsung had a market share of 7 percent in the April-June period after shipping 900,000 Chromebooks that refer to laptops or tablets running on Google's Chrome operating system (OS), according to a report from market researcher International Data Corp. (IDC).

A revision bill has been proposed to allow game players to withdraw from their contracts with game developers and get refunds when faced with unfair practices. “If game developers and publishers decide to roll back their games to a previous version as a result of their own mistakes, they must provide proper compensations to game players,” said Rep. Yang Jung-suk, an independent lawmaker, who authored the draft of the revision bill to the Act on the Consumer Protection in Electronic

South Korea marked its first trade surplus in medicines in 2020, backed by gains in drug exports, the government said Sunday. According to data from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the country posted a surplus of 1.39 trillion won ($1.21 billion) in pharmaceutical trade in 2020, which grew 62.5 percent from the year earlier. The export of drugs jumped 92.3 percent to 7.93 trillion won, taking up 79.6 percent of all outbound shipments, the ministry explained. It was the first time th