Global food manufacturers find the Chinese market a tough nut to crack. The U.S. government recently complained about China’s subsidies to enterprises including food manufacturers. Last year, E-mart, Korea’s largest supermarket chain, pulled out of China after 17 years of operations there. Despite such difficulties, the Chinese food market, with its 1.4 billion customers, is still enticing to ...

So-called curated dining businesses, collections of famous restaurants under one roof, are catching on in Korea. According to the founders of Over the Dish, a Seoul-based restaurant curator, success in the industry is all about location and a competitive edge in theme selection. “It seems like a fad ― from the high-end Galleria Department Store in southern Seoul with Gourmet 494 to the rather a...

Long loved in Korea for gentle tunes such as “Rainbow Bridge” and “Day by Day,” composer and pianist Steve Barakatt has returned this time with an epic symphony that he hopes will “wow” fans. Barakatt will be showcasing, for the first time in Korea, his symphonic work “Ad Vitam Aeternam” ― “for eternity” in Latin ― alongside conductor Kim Bong-mee and Herald Philharmonic Orchestra. Written in 1...

Three-time Grammy nominee and up-and-coming singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is becoming one of the decade’s most notable breakthrough artists. The 24-year-old musician, who went quintuple platinum in the U.K. with his 2011 debut album “+,” will be making his way to Korea to hold his first concert here. Sheeran’s debut album, featuring hit singles “The A Team” and “Lego House,” earned him the Best ...

When the governing Saenuri Party picked Jasmine Lee to serve as a lawmaker in April 2012, hate groups attacked her as a “dark-skinned” foreigner posing as a Korean. Saenuri officials hoped Lee, the first Philippine-born lawmaker here, would encourage “diversity” in a dominantly homogenous, and sometimes xenophobic South Korea, to better represent naturalized citizens, foreign laborers, and other...

A Korean company is helping develop infrastructure for the rising tourism industry on Myanmar as it plans to build and operate the first cable car in Mount Kyaiktiyo in Mon State next year. “The cable car will give easier access to Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, better known as the golden rock, located at the summit of the 1,100-meter high mountain,’’ Sky Asia CEO Yoo Sun-ha said in a recent interview with T...

South Korea should take advantage of cooperation between Russia and North Korea to smooth the way for regional economic integration and improve inter-Korean relations, an expert said in an interview with The Korea Herald last week. According to Park Byung-in, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies and at Kyungnam University’s Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, the recen...

AERIX, a leading South Korean solution provider for air pollution control and protection, is stepping up its efforts to enter China as the country is poised to raise the bar for air quality improvement from 2016. “The company has set its sights on the growing business opportunities in Chinese power generation and manufacturing sectors,’’ AERIX CEO Kim Kun-ho said in a recent interview with The K...

To understand Pierre Herme, it is almost implicitly understood that a bite of one of his world famous macarons is the first step. Luscious, fragrant and delicate, macarons like his orange blossom-rose-ginger morsel serve as sufficient proof as to why he has been touted “the Picasso of Pastry” by French Vogue. Now, with two boutiques in Seoul, the master himself is here in South Korea for a four...

Seoul needs wider flexibility in reopening inter-Korean dialogue, a political scientist said, urging the Park Geun-hye administration to actively engage in “preventive diplomacy” with Pyongyang to keep cross-border tensions from escalating. Moon Chung-in, a political science professor at Yonsei University, stressed that the nation should be proactive in tackling North Korean issues, noting that ...

For an investor to distinguish itself in the highly competitive Asian market, the key task is to select an area of business that is neither too narrow, nor too vague. Based on this principle, Olympus Capital Holdings Asia, a private equity firm with a focus on investing in Asia, has decided to target three sectors: agribusiness, environment and clean energy, and financial and business services. ...

Korea needs to use the financial resources of the private sector and new, innovative tools to sustain the real estate market for long-term stability, according to Jin Chang-ha, a Hanyang University professor who specializes in real estate finance and investment. The market is facing a paradigm shift, with “jeonse” leases ― lump sum deposits in lieu of rent ― quickly being replaced by rental agre...

Korean tenants have traditionally preferred fixed “jeonse” leases to more expensive monthly rents, but increasingly they are feeling the pinch, as the supply of jeonse properties dries up. Son Jae-young, professor at Konkuk University’s Real Estate Department. According to property market expert Son Jae-young, Koreans may have to accept the system’s disappearance. Jeonse is not a welfare system...

Korea Forest Service Minister Shin Won-sop said that the state-run afforestation agency would continue to step up efforts to forge strategic partnerships overseas, and support Korean SMEs to stably invest in Southeast Asia’s forestry sector in the long term. KFS Minister Shin Won-sop. (KFS) The exchanges with countries such as Indonesia and Cambodia will help Korea secure necessary wood resourc...

With a new office in Seoul, Oxfam is ready to forge partnerships with other relief groups, businesses and civil society here to fight poverty, inequality, climate change and other global challenges, a senior official at the organization said. Chris Ashworth, international market development manager at Oxfam Great Britain Chris Ashworth, international market development manager at Oxfam Great Br...