A campaign pledge by ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung has sent jitters through the finance sector as he vowed to hand the nation’s financial watchdog stronger legal authority to side with consumers when settling disputes with insurers. The ruling party’s presidential election campaign committee on Friday announced that Lee seeks to ban insurers from not conceding to orders from the Financial Supervisory Service to financially compensate their customers without a &ld

South Korea consumers were found to be more satisfied with local goods and services on average last year than their peers in the US, Japan and Singapore, according to the National Consumer Satisfaction Index annually published by the Korea Productivity Center. The index -- an indicator of not only user satisfaction but economic performance of companies, government agencies and the macroeconomy as a whole -- is adopted by a little over 30 countries globally, which use the same metrics to identif

Next to Canada, Korea ranks 18th of 38 members in 2020

Seoul has the world‘s fourth-largest defense R&D expenditure

To deal with a possible testing crisis driven by an omicron surge, South Korea says it would give people at higher risk PCR tests first, while lower priority people take at-home rapid antigen tests. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said the country’s COVID-19 diagnosis system, which so far has only used the highly accurate PCR tests, may start using the rapid antigen tests for less urgent cases. At the moment omicron accounts for 8 percent of all sequenced cases in Korea. But given i

The influence of global OTT platforms was once again proven with Netflix original series “Squid Game” supporting actor Oh Young-soo‘s win at the 79th Golden Globes on Monday. International successes like Oh’s are increasingly likely in the near future as more Korean actors have started working on projects targeting global audiences. Many big-name stars are choosing to appear in Netflix’s original series, which are made available in 190 countries. Kim Hye-soo and

Oh Young-soo, who played player No.1 in Netflix’s South Korean megahit “Squid Game,” directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, took home the best performance by a supporting actor in a series, limited series, or television movie trophy at the 79th Golden Globe Awards, becoming the first Korean actor win at the awards organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Oh was nominated in the category along with Brett Goldstein of AppleTV+’s “Ted Lasso” and HBO’s K

People’s Party presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo has rapidly gained on his ruling and main opposition rivals in recent weeks, as he is appearing to absorb voters peeling away from People Power Party’s Yoon Suk-yeol. Ahn came out on top in a Realmeter poll of 3,042 people released Monday in a hypothetical alliance with the main opposition party. The poll, requested by local media outlet Oh My News, was held from Jan. 2 to Friday. Some 35.9 percent answered they would vote for hi

The omicron caseload in Seoul has more than doubled to 456 on Monday from last week's 183 cases, the city government said. Omicron marks 0.2 percent of the total COVID-19 cases confirmed in Seoul so far. Omicron is highly likely to become the most prevalent COVID-19 variant in the city by late this month or February, Park Yoo-mi, a disease control official of the city government said. The city, meanwhile, saw the average number of daily new coronavirus cases decline from 1,533 in the final

A trio of England-based veterans, including the high-scoring midfielder Ji So-yun, will try to lead South Korea to their first continental women's football title this month in India. The Korea Football Association (KFA) finalized the 23-player squad for the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women's Asian Cup on Monday. Ji, South Korean football's all-time leading scorer with 59 goals in 131 matches, will be competing in her fourth Asian Cup. The 30-year-old midfielder for Chelsea FC Women wi

KT Corp., a major South Korean mobile carrier, said Monday its internet protocol television (IPTV) services were disrupted for nearly an hour, just three months after the company suffered a major network outage. The company's Olleh TV services were interrupted from 10:42 p.m. to 11:40 p.m. on Sunday due to a technical glitch in the power supply device of the signal distributor, according to KT and the Ministry of Science and ICT. Among 304 channels, 205 channels -- including the state-funded b

South Korea's unification ministry said Monday it's closely watching a possible change in North Korea's anti-coronavirus policy, such as the lifting of its strict border closure, after Pyongyang's main newspaper said the country will shift to more "advanced" antivirus measures from the current control-focused approach. "We need to move to a better advanced, people-oriented epidemic work from one that focused on control measures," the Rodong Sinmun newspaper said. It did not

Bigman dropped by our studio and shared his story with us! Check it out! By Team Konnect Kim Min-jung (minjung.kim@heraldcorp.com) Jung Ji-eun (jungje@heraldcorp.com) Choi Jeong-yoon (jychoi@heraldcorp.com) Kim Jeong-ryul (ryul@heraldcorp.com)

LG Electronics said Monday it has joined the IBM Quantum Network as a member to further explore its applications for quantum computing required in the field of artificial intelligence, connected cars, internet of things and robotics. LG Electronics, an electronics arm of South Korea‘s fourth-largest conglomerate, was the latest to take part in the alliance of over 170 entities. Those taking part in the community as a member, partner or quantum hub are given access to IBM‘s quantum c