SEOUL, Sept. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s antitrust regulator on Thursday conditionally approved a joint venture between Shinsegae Group’s Gmarket and Alibaba’s AliExpress Korea, clearing the way for a new challenger to disrupt a market long dominated by Coupang and Naver. The tie-up, structured as a 50:50 joint company under Grand Opus Holding, will [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean retail giant Shinsegae Group said Thursday its joint venture with Alibaba International has secured regulatory approval, clearing the way for a launch next month that could reshape the country’s online retail landscape. The 50:50 venture, greenlit by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, was approved after the companies [...]
SEOUL· SEJONG, Aug. 31 (Korea Bizwire) — AliExpress, the Chinese e-commerce platform, has been hit with a multimillion-dollar penalty in South Korea for misleading customers with inflated discount claims on thousands of products. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Sunday it imposed corrective orders and fines totaling 20.93 billion won ($15.5 million) after finding that [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — CJ OnStyle announced Sunday that it will launch a new mobile live commerce broadcast infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and extended reality (XR), positioning immersive video content as a differentiator in an increasingly crowded e-commerce market. The first installment, airing August 24, will spotlight the popular women’s underwear brand [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 20 (Korea Bizwire) – More than half of South Korean consumers who unknowingly purchase counterfeit goods online do not seek refunds, citing complicated procedures and small amounts of money at stake, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Korea Consumer Agency. The survey, conducted among 1,000 consumers across eight major platforms — [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean internet giant Naver Corp. said Tuesday it has decided to fully acquire Spanish online marketplace Wallapop as part of a broader strategy to expand its social commerce business overseas. Naver will invest 604.5 billion won (US$435.2 million) to acquire an additional 70.5 percent stake in the Spanish [...]
SEOUL, July 25 (Korea Bizwire) — Roughly 40% of South Korea’s major online shopping platforms rely on proprietary algorithms to rank product reviews without disclosing the criteria behind those rankings, raising concerns about consumer trust and transparency, according to a new report by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. In a survey released Friday by the Seoul [...]
SEOUL, July 21 (Korea Bizwire) — As Korean pop culture continues to captivate global audiences, secondhand K-pop merchandise is experiencing a dramatic surge in international demand, driving a new wave of “reverse direct-to-consumer” sales from South Korea to overseas buyers. According to Bunjang, a leading Korean secondhand marketplace, the platform’s global transaction volume in the first [...]
SEOUL, July 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Global B2B e-commerce platform Alibaba.com said Monday it has launched its Trade Assurance service in South Korea to help local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) expand exports more safely and transparently. Trade Assurance is Alibaba.com’s proprietary transaction protection service, designed to provide a secure trading environment for both sellers [...]
SEOUL, June 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean grocery delivery platform Oasis Corp. said Monday it has acquired full ownership of e-commerce platform TMON after a court approved its rehabilitation plan, which included the acquisition proposal. TMON filed for court receivership in July last year following widespread delays in payments to vendors using its platform. [...]