Korean pianist Lee Hyuk failed to win a trophy at the 18th Chopin International Piano Competition. Lee, 21, who was one of 12 finalists, did not make the list of awardees announced by the Polish Chopin Institute on Thursday. The competition, held every five years, was postponed from 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, more than 500 pianists signed up for the competition and some 87 contenders made it to the main competition. Lee was the only Korean contender among the 12 finalists

Eight out of 10 young Koreans are currently investing in stocks, funds, cryptocurrencies and other assets, and their main purpose behind making such investments is to buy a home, a survey showed Thursday. According to the survey conducted by insurance agency Rich Planner Consulting Co. on 1,000 Koreans in their 20s and 30s, 88.2 percent of them answered they are investing in stocks. Nearly 35 percent said they are trading cryptocurrency. For the purpose of investment, 42.2 percent of young in

The Seoul city government said Thursday it will file complaints with police against all participants in a labor rally called by a militant umbrella union a day earlier on charges of violating the infectious disease prevention act. On Wednesday afternoon, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) staged a massive rally in central Seoul for about two hours as part of a one-day general strike to bring labor issues to the fore in the runup to the 2022 presidential election. About 27,000 union

US ambassador to UN condemns launch as “reckless provocations,” calls for enforcement of sanctions

Author Kim Hyo-eun, winner of the 2021 World Illustration Awards’ Professional Children’s Publishing category, talks about discovering the extraordinary in the most ordinary scenes

SK Plasma, a subsidiary of SK Discovery, said on Thursday it has been selected as the provider of blood products to Singapore for six years from 2023. As the first South Korean pharmaceutical company to win an order in Singapore’s state-run blood product project, SK Plasma will sign a contract with the Southeast Asian country this year, and produce albumin and human immunoglobulin using blood plasma from Singapore. Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority is known for having high qual

Shinhan Bank said Thursday it has opened an office in Hungary, becoming the first South Korean commercial lender to enter the central European country. The flagship lender under the nation’s No. 1 banking group by assets said it was granted the license to operate by the Hungarian National Bank in September and opened the office Tuesday. It also marked Shinhan’s latest overseas market entry since the launch of its subsidiary in Mexico in 2018. The new office is expected to bolste

Fund houses in Korea to compete on level playing field with foreigners on domestic nonbank direct lending market, experts say

Questions remain whether the new law will be effective in protecting victims and their families

Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said Thursday that the government will come up with measures to prevent and redeem what are deemed to be "unusually excessive" gains from land development projects in the wake of the escalating scandal over a corruption-laden urban development project near Seoul. A prosecution probe is under way into how a little-known asset management firm, Hwacheon Daeyu, and its seven affiliates reaped profits worth 1,000 times its investment in an apartment development

North Korea's recently tested submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) appears to be in an early stage of development and can be intercepted, South Korea's defense minister said Thursday. Suh Wook made the remarks during a parliamentary audit session, as his ministry vowed to deploy more missile detection assets and reinforce cooperation with the United States to deal with the North's continued missile research activities. Tensions flared up anew Tuesday, when Pyongyang launched a new type

Samsung Heavy Industries Co. said Thursday it has won an approval in principle (AIP) for the conceptual design of a storage tank and carrier to transport liquefied hydrogen, from Lloyd's Register, a British ship quality assurance and risk management company. AIP for the conceptual design means a certification agency has reviewed it and confirmed it meets the agency's technical requirements and standards for safety. The conceptual design of a membrane-type storage tank and 160,000-cubic meter

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. (DSME) said Thursday that it has bagged a 232.2 billion won ($197.6 million) deal to build a LNG carrier. The deal, signed with an Oceanian company, calls for DSME to deliver the vessel by September 2024, the shipbuilder said in a regulatory filing. Not including the latest deal, DSME has won $8.58 billion worth of orders so far this year for 46 ships, one wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV), one submarine and two offshore facilities, alrea

SEJONG -- The number of layer chickens raised in South Korea dropped 4.2 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier due to the impact of the bird flu outbreak, data showed Thursday. The number of layer chickens came to 70.7 million as of end-September, compared with 73.8 million a year earlier, according to the data from Statistics Korea. Yet it was up from 65.9 million three months earlier and 62.1 million as of end-March, which was the lowest in more than three years. The on-year decr