SEOUL, May 9 (Korea Bizwire) – Augmented reality is becoming one of the hottest trends in South Korea’s retail sector following the worldwide success of Niantic’s Pokémon GO, offering local consumers a unique yet more convenient shopping experience. Last month, Hanssem, a leading home furnishing company, equipped its mobile shopping app with an AR service, [...]
SEOUL, May 9 (Korea Bizwire) – Naver Corp., South Korea’s top Internet portal operator, plans to unveil an artificial intelligence (AI) embedded smart speaker, the WAVE, this summer, industry sources said Tuesday. According to the sources, Naver and its Japanese affiliate LINE Corp. are working to launch the smart speaker based on its AI virtual [...]
SEOUL, May 9 (Korea Bizwire) – Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. and Samsung Heavy Industries Co. have clinched orders valued at a combined US$1 billion to build very large crude carriers (VLCCs), industry sources said Tuesday. According to the sources, Hyundai Heavy has secured an order to build two VLCCs. The deal includes an option to [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – Local businesses are introducing so-called “concept stores” to improve the image of their brands. Such stores include pop-up stores or traditional offline shops with in-house cafés and gardens, or retail spaces decorated with different themes to appeal to more customers. SkinFood, a cosmetics company, operates two outlets with cafés [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – Data from the Korea Rural Economic Institute has revealed that South Korea had an annual average of 280,000 tons of excess rice supply over the past decade (2007 to 2016), a yearly surplus large enough to feed the 600,000-strong South Korean military for eight years. According to the institute, [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – May 5 was South Korea’s first Children’s Day celebrated by a greater number of seniors than children, once again highlighting the country’s rapidly shifting demographics towards an aging society. Using the OECD’s standard of working age population (from 15 to 64) to separate “children” from “elderly,” there were 6,873,722 [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – Ginseng exports to China amounted to $9.9 million in the first quarter of 2017, which was double the figure compared to Q1 2016, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Exports to China saw rapid growth starting in 2000, peaking at $45.61 [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – With South Korea’s presidential election just one day away, North Korea on Monday called for an end to the history of inter-Korean confrontation. “The tragic North-South Korea relations today have been wrought by the conservative groups which, having been in power for the past 10 years, revived the foregone [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., a major South Korean shipbuilder, said Monday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with a Saudi shipping firm to work together to develop technologies needed for a ‘smart ship’ platform. Under the deal with the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia, better known [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) – U.S. direct investment in South Korea fell last year for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, central bank data showed Monday. The U.S. direct investment in South Korea totaled US$33.9 billion last year, down 1 percent from $34.2 billion a year ago, according to the data compiled [...]