SEOUL, April 18 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea and China will hold high-level talks this week to address difficulties faced by their businesses following the implementation of a bilateral free trade agreement last year, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Monday. Second Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul and Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Gao Yan will meet in Seoul Wednesday to [...]
DAEGU, April 18 (Korea Bizwire) – Daegu residents will soon be able to find out where wild boars frequently appear using a new smartphone application. According to the Daegu Environmental Protection Agency and KT’s Daegu Customer Service headquarters, an agreement was reached to establish a system to prevent damage from wild boars through IoT (Internet of Things) [...]
SEOUL, April 18 (Korea Bizwire) – The lines between types of retailers are blurring, with open markets and social commerce businesses broadening their horizons to retail brokerage services. The industry is leaving no stone unturned in a push to attract consumers to mobile shopping markets. Large offline discount stores are building logistics centers for [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – After a rule change from the Korean army that opened cigarette sales on military bases to foreign companies, both the domestic tobacco industry and tobacco farms are up in arms. A total of 20 different types of cigarettes are supplied to the army PX. The armed forces welfare group evaluates the [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Banana-flavored snack cakes known as ‘pies’ in Korea are rising as a new ‘hot item’ in the snack market. Lotte Confectionery announced that it sold more than 15 million of its ‘Mon Cher Choco & Banana’ snacks, which it launched in March. The popularity of the product also boosted interest [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s top three mobile carriers will team up with Naver, the country’s leading Internet service provider, to launch a unified app store, company officials said Thursday. SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. already have a combined app retail channel: One Store. A subsidiary of SK Telecom, which [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Coupang, South Korea’s leading e-commerce operator, said Thursday its sales jumped more than three-fold in 2015 thanks to its delivery service, but its operating loss widened due to big investments in logistics capacity. Coupang posted 1.13 trillion won (US$ 976.66 million) in sales last year, becoming the first social commerce [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – The South Korean market for insomnia medications is growing at a fast clip as more people complain of sleep disorders, industry sources said Thursday. According to data by the National Health Insurance Service, 455,900 South Koreans received hospital treatment for sleep disorders in 2015, up a whopping 57 percent from [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Samsung SDI Co., a major chemical unit under the country’s top conglomerate Samsung, said Thursday that it plans to spend around 1 trillion won (US$875 million) this year on beefing up its electric vehicle (EV) battery business. Samsung SDI said it plans to spend 975 billion won this year [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Any visitor wearing hanbok or Korean traditional attire will be admitted for free at two royal palaces in Seoul which will open to the public at night late this month, the Cultural Heritage Administration said Thursday. The administration said that the night viewing of Gyeongbok and Changgyeong palaces of the Joseon Dynasty [...]