SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stormed a battery plant construction site in Bryan County, Georgia, earlier this month, hundreds of South Korean workers found themselves in shackles, held in freezing rooms with moldy mattresses and little explanation of what crime they had committed. The episode, now reverberating across [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s presidential office said Tuesday it will not be rushed into signing a trade agreement with Washington, cautioning that a deal struck hastily could undermine the interests of Korean companies at a delicate moment in negotiations. Talks have been ongoing since late July, when the two governments reached [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — A growing number of South Koreans in their 40s and 50s are turning to individual Treasury bonds as a preferred tool for retirement planning, according to new data from Mirae Asset Securities, the sole distributor of the instruments. Figures show that 39.3 percent of investors in such bonds over [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s telecommunications industry is reeling after a fresh wave of security breaches left consumers questioning the integrity of mobile networks, just months after a massive SIM card hacking scandal at SK Telecom. The latest blow came at KT, where hackers exploited vulnerabilities in unauthorized micro base stations, or [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s three major telecom operators have unveiled multibillion-won cybersecurity investment plans in the wake of April’s high-profile SK Telecom hack. Yet experts caution that the spending may amount to little more than after-the-fact remedies, failing to address deeper systemic weaknesses. SK Telecom, KT, and LG Uplus each announced [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea is facing intensifying “agflation,” as surging agricultural prices add new pressure to household costs and expose deep structural weaknesses in the nation’s farming and distribution systems. Consumer prices for agricultural, livestock and fisheries products jumped 4.8 percent in August from a year earlier, the sharpest increase in [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly one in six foreign graduates who stayed in South Korea after studying have faced workplace difficulties, including conflicts with Korean colleagues or wage disputes, according to a government-funded study released Sunday. The Korea Immigration Service Institute found that 16.4 percent of foreign residents who previously studied in Korea [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — A string of attempted child abductions in recent weeks has triggered a surge in demand for self-defense products among South Korean parents, with online marketplaces reporting sharp increases in sales. According to e-commerce platform 11st, purchases of key personal safety items between September 2 and 11 jumped 2.5 times compared [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — A central plank of Google’s lobbying campaign to secure approval for exporting South Korea’s high-precision mapping data is coming under sharp scrutiny, with experts arguing that the projected economic benefits are inflated and based on questionable assumptions. Google has cited research suggesting that if Korea allows the export of [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — When Netflix’s animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters premiered earlier this year, few predicted that a fictional boy band would ignite a cultural wave stretching from Seoul to New York. Yet the Saja Boys — a group of grim-reaper–inspired idols who appear in the film — have quickly leapt from [...]