SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – President Park Geun-hye granted special pardons Thursday to high-profile businessmen and more than 6,500 others ahead of Liberation Day. “I decided to grant special pardons in order to help forge national reconciliation and revitalize the economy as well as to boost people’s spirits,” Park said in a Cabinet meeting. The [...]
“We are very understanding of the decision. President Barack Obama is looking forward to meeting Park at a “mutually convenient time.” “Obviously, we have been in close consultations back and forth with the government (of South Korea), watching the situation closely over the last several days. We are very understanding of the decision,” - Mark [...]
SEOUL, May 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Self-driving cars could hit South Korean roads by 2020, an official said Friday, in an apparent move to stay ahead of the global competition for autonomous vehicles. South Korea will develop sensors and other autonomous technologies while cutting red tape for driverless cars, presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook said. He [...]
SEOUL, May 11 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean President Park Geun-hye announced a plan Monday to take advantage of big data to create new business opportunities as she launched a new innovation center. “Big data is a new capital of the creative economy,” Park said in the opening ceremony of the latest innovation center in [...]
SEOUL, May 8 (Korea Bizwire) — U.S. Internet giant Google Inc. opened its first Asian campus for start-ups and entrepreneurs in South Korea on Friday as part of efforts to provide more business opportunities for them. With the size of 2,000 square meters, the Campus Seoul in the posh Gangnam district in the southern part [...]
SEOUL, May 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Criticisms abound on the lack of South Korea’s diplomacy as the United States and Japan hurry to enhance their bilateral alliance and Seoul shuns Tokyo over history disputes. South Korea has for decades maintained close three-way security ties not only with its ally, the U.S., but with Japan, South [...]
SEOUL, May 3 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s provincial governments Sunday unveiled plans to resume long-suspended aid to and exchange projects with North Korea under a new inter-Korean reconciliation policy by the Park Geun-hye government. Last week, the Ministry of Unification announced plans to promote inter-Korean exchanges in such areas as culture, sports and history to [...]
SEOUL, April 30 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea said Thursday that the volume of inter-Korean trade hit a record high in 2014 on growth in exchanges at a joint industrial complex in the North despite Seoul’s punitive sanctions on Pyongyang. The value of inter-Korean trade reached US$2.343 billion last year, up 106.2 percent from a [...]
SEOUL, April 29 (Korea Bizwire) –A majority of Koreans doubt that the prosecutors’ office will be able to thoroughly investigate the bribe scandal of a late businessman. The People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy surveyed 1,000 adults on April 25 and 26 on the so-called “Sung Wan-jong List” scandal. Among the respondents, 53.5 percent said that [...]
SEOUL, April 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Tens of thousands of unionized workers walked out of their work places across the country Friday against government plans to reform the pension system for public servants and introduce a more flexible labor market. About 260,000 unionized workers joined the one-day walkout launched in 2,829 work places across the [...]