SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s state pension fund is expected to receive over 1 trillion won (US$869 million) in stock dividends from the country’s top 30 conglomerates, sharply up 20 percent from last year’s tally, industry data showed Tuesday. Industry tracker CEO Score analyzed dividend payments planned by the conglomerates-affiliated 97 companies [...]
SEJONG, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea and Southeast Asian countries agreed to speed up negotiations to upgrade their free trade agreement, Seoul’s trade ministry said Tuesday, amid rising fears over trade protectionism. Seoul has been in talks with the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to improve the FTA, which took effect [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – North Korea has misappropriated part of an international relief package to help it deal with the devastation caused by deadly flooding last year for its major infrastructure projects, a U.S. broadcast said Tuesday. A source in the northern Ryanggang Province told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that materials and funds [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Four major South Korean pharmaceutical companies spent more than 100 billion won (US$86.9 million) each on research and development (R&D) in 2016, industry officials said Tuesday. The four drug companies — Hanmi Pharmaceutical Co., Green Cross Corp., Daewoong Pharma and Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical Corp. — sharply expanded their [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – Valentine’s Day is still one of the most meaningful occasions for lovers, but for South Koreans, it has become a day to express friendship between colleagues, classmates, and even family members. Big data analysis firm Daumsoft said Monday that the word “friends” has been the most popular term related [...]
URUMA, Japan, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – With less than a month to go before the first pitch is thrown, South Korea opened its training camp for the World Baseball Classic in Uruma, Okinawa. During the team’s ten-day training camp in Japan, it will play practice games against two Nippon Professional Baseball clubs – the [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – China is maintaining a firm stance against South Korea’s deployment of an American THAAD missile battery, imposing a string of retaliatory measures against Korean businesses, including cosmetics companies, that have made significant progress in the Chinese market in recent years. According to INI R&C, a Korean research firm, Chinese [...]
SEJONG, Feb. 13 Korea Bizwire) – The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced Monday a set of plans for the local automotive industry from 2017 to 2021 to better prepare South Korea for the imminent era of autonomous vehicles. According to the ministry, demand for safer vehicles will only increase given Korea’s rapidly aging [...]
TOKYO, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of Japanese tourists visiting South Korea increased 23.4 percent from a year earlier to 2.30 million in 2016 amid improved relations between the two neighboring countries, marking a reversal from declines for three consecutive years, data showed Monday. According to the Tokyo office of the state-run Korea [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s domestic sales of personal computers inched up in 2016 from a year earlier, marking the first such growth in five years, industry data showed Monday. According to the data compiled by market researcher IDC Korea, South Korea’s sales of PCs came to 4.62 million units last year, [...]