cultivation period

Stocks Meritz leaps to No. 2 financial holding firm in South Korea

Meritz Financial Group Inc., once a medium-sized financial service firm in South Korea, has become the second-most valuable publicly traded financia...

Earnings Samsung’s Q4 profit misses expectations; Stock rises

Samsung Electronics Co. flagged weaker-than-expected earnings for the last quarter of last year due to a fall in memory chip prices and soft demand ...

Pension funds NPS enjoys 9.2% return as of Q3 on bullish US stocks

The National Pension Service (NPS), South Korea’s largest institutional investor, reported a preliminary 9.18% return from investments, equiva...

Beauty & Cosmetics AmorePacific to rebalance China-heavy global business

AmorePacific Corp., South Korea’s No. 1 cosmetics group, will rebalance its China-heavy global business to focus on the US and Europe while lo...

Automobiles Kia to sweep top three spots in Korea car sales on SUV, hybrid boom

Kia Corp., South Korea’s No. 2 automaker, is poised to claim the top three spots on the country’s best-selling car list this year thanks...

Content platforms Airbnb Korea to evict listings not submitting business license

Airbnb Korea announced on Tuesday that it will require new listings on the platform to submit business registration information and a business licen...

Regulations Korea tightens rules on Netflix, Spotify subscription billing

South Korea’s antitrust body is slated to tighten the leash on subscription businesses of streaming service providers such as Netflix Inc. and...

Economy S.Korea’s current account at near 7-year high on strong chip exports

South Korea reported its biggest monthly current account surplus in six years and nine months thanks to robust exports of semiconductors. But the gr...

Robotics LG Elec launches CLOi robot subscription service

LG Electronics Inc. announced on Monday that it launched its Robot as a Service (RaaS) with CLOi robots starting this month.Business-to-business (B2...

Retail Foreign VIP customers boost Korean department stores' sales

Wei Liu, a 41-year-old Taiwanese businessman, snapped up 300 million won ($220,000) worth of luxury brand products at Hyundai Department Store&rsquo...

Pension funds NPS to cut Korean stock allocation to 13% by 2029

South Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS), also the world’s third-largest pension fund, will gradually reduce the proportion of its l...

Banking & Finance Korean bank branch closures accelerate as online deals grow

South Korean banks are accelerating moves to close branches given the growth in digital transactions and decline in offline customers but financial ...

Private equity PEs exit Korean assets at average 2.5 times purchase price

Global private equity firms, which recover their principal investment in South Korea, sell their assets for 2.5 times the purchase price on average,...

Food & Beverage Shinsegae to close whisky business to focus on profits

Shinsegae Inc., South Korea’s largest department store and supermarket company, will pull out of the whisky market, bucking the trend of the r...

Automobiles GM Korea’s exports surpass 10 mn units Jan-Nov 2023

GM Korea Co. said on Thursday its vehicle exports have surpassed 10 million units this year as of the end of November with shipments of 10,082,281 u...

Corporate strategy Shinsegae head calls for drastic systems-centered reform

Shinsegae Group Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin has urged the South Korean retail giant to make drastic systems-centered reforms to ensure stable and s...

Electric vehicles Hyundai Motor to manufacture BAIC’s Arcfox EVs in China

BEIJING -- Hyundai Motor Co. is set to manufacture electric vehicles of Arcfox, a Chinese EV brand owned by BAIC Motor Corp., as the leading South K...

Automobiles EVs, SUVs power Hyundai, Kia’s US sales to Sept records

Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Corp., South Korea’s two largest carmakers, enjoyed record September sales thanks to the popularity of their electri...

Machinery Daedong targets hobby farmers to double US market share

South Korea’s No. 1 agricultural machinery maker Daedong Corp., better known by the brand name Kioti in the US, is targeting the growing hobby...

Korean startups Cultivated meat, carbon capture on center stage at D.Day

Simple Planet, a South Korean biotech startup developing sustainable food technologies, has won this month’s startup pitch day held jointly by...

Private equity SK Group, NPS may exercise put option on Masan without gain

South Korean institutional investors, including SK Group and National Pension Service (NPS), are likely to only recover their principal without prof...

Korean games Nexon launches hit RPG Blue Archive in China

South Korea’s major game company Nexon Co. on Thursday said it officially released on the Chinese market Blue Archive, a subculture mobile rol...

Fashion S.Korea’s overseas online shopping surpasses $1.3 bn in Q2 2023

South Korea's overseas online shopping through Chinese malls in the second quarter of this year has more than doubled compared to a year ago. Accor...

Economy FDI pledges to S.Korea set fresh record in H1 2023

Foreign direct investment pledges to South Korea from January to June of this year soared 54.2% on-year, hitting a record high for the first-half pe...

Korean food Kooksoondang to export limited edition makgeolli to Japan in four years

Kooksoondang Co., a South Korean brewery that produces traditional rice-based wines, announced on Friday that it will export 100,000 bottles of the ...

K-pop Amorepacific runs events to mark BTS 10th anniversary

South Korean beauty and cosmetics giant Amorepacific Corp. has temporarily opened a staff-only space to BTS fans.  The company’s Seoul h...

Travel & Leisure Japanese travelers top list of reservations to visit Seoul during BTS Festa

Trip.com, a South Korean travel platform, announced on Wednesday that the most frequent overseas travelers to Seoul during the “BTS Festa&rdqu...

Food & Beverage CJ to open pop-up Korean restaurant for promising chefs in Seoul

South Korean food giant CJ CheilJedang Corp. in the second half of the year will open a pop-up Korean restaurant for up-and-coming chefs on the upsc...

Economy S.Korea mulls adding national pension benefits to raise birth rate

South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare is considering adding national pension benefits for married couples to raise the ever-declining birth r...

Food & Beverage S.Korea imports over 8,000 tons of whiskey in Q1

South Korea's whiskey imports hit an all-time high for the same period In the first quarter of this year. It is the second-highest quarterly figure ...