South Korea's finance and environment ministries said Monday that they have changed a state subsidy scheme for eco-friendly vehicles to allow buyers of efficient cars to get larger subsidies from this year.  Currently, the state subsidy is calculated on an electric car's battery capability.  Under the revised subsidy program, buyers of an electric vehicle with a longer driving range per charge will get more in subsidies, the finance ministry said in a statement.  Effective from th

ULike Korea, a smart livestock health care management company, announced Monday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Denmark’s largest telecommunication company, TDC, to launch the world’s first NB-IoT (Narrow Band IoT) bio-capsule in Denmark.ULikeKorea has recently developed the world’s first NB-IoT bio-capsule and will start a pilot project in the first half of this year at a dairy farm. NB-IoT technology enables the transmission of data using minimal power a

CJ ENM, the operator of K-pop-oriented cable channel Mnet, said Monday it will launch a 25.3 billion-won ($21.8 million) investment fund dedicated to the K-pop industry.The establishment of the fund, KC Vivace Investment Association, is in line with the entertainment giant's pledge three weeks earlier to set up a 30 billion-won investment fund to apologize for vote manipulation in a fan-voted Mnet K-pop audition show. Chief producers of the popular audition show, "Produce 101," are sta

Tech giant retains 3 CEOs, taps younger chief to lead smartphone innovations

South Korea said Monday it will spend more on research and development  in the energy segment this year as the country targets clean and sustainable economic growth.South Korea will spend 916.3 billion won ($789 million), a 19-percent rise from last year, on such projects, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Most of the money will be allocated to projects related to South Korea's green energy drive.Last year, Seoul unveiled its initiative to create a hydrogen economy, s

　South Korea’s outbound shipments of processed rice products shot up last year, amid the booming popularity of Korean dramas, K-pop and other cultural content abroad, data showed.　Exports of these products reached $106 million in 2019, marking a sharp rise from $89 million posted a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. The exports also nearly doubled from $55 million posted in 2015.　These products cover a wide range of food items, such as snacks, n

 Lotte Group founder and Honorary Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho passed away Sunday at age 97, leaving as his legacy a self-made business empire, although his later years were marred by a family feud.He was the last of the first-generation founders of the major conglomerates -- the other four being Samsung, Hyundai, LG and SK. Shin was a self-made entrepreneur who started Lotte as a maker of chewing gum and grew the business into the nation’s fifth-largest conglomerate, operating in the food,

Number and share of registered electric, hydrogen, hybrid cars

Users of Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Samsung Cloud in South Korea are on high alert regarding personal security issues in the wake of private data thefts involving some celebrities. A growing number of Galaxy users here are checking on the security status of their gadgets to ensure they follow the recommended security guidelines. Samsung Electronics has notified users to enhance their phone’s security by activating the two-step verification mode that double-checks user authenticity when

SAN FRANCISCO -- The 38th JP Morgan Healthcare Conference 2020 came to a close Thursday, with small and big deals still covered under wraps.Being the biggest annual gathering of pharmaceuticals companies presenting each of their pipelines’ research progress, JP Morgan conference in San Francisco has often concluded in mega deals that drew eyes. In 2015, Korea’s Hanmi Pharmaceutical was invited to the conference, where it presented its major pipelines and ended up licensing out to big

Hyundai Motor’s luxury brand Genesis unveiled its first sport utility vehicle GV80 last week, with a goal of selling 24,000 units in South Korea this year. The model will be launched in North America this summer.The Korea Herald had an opportunity to test drive GV80 in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, on the day of its launch on Wednesday. Genesis’ first vehicle based on a rear-wheel-drive platform -- runs on a six-cylinder diesel engine -- which exerts a maximum torque of 60 kilogram-meter

SAN FRANCISCO -- Korean central nervous system drug developer SK Biopharmaceuticals’ CEO Cho Jeong-woo vowed to acquire a novel drug approval every two years, speaking to reporters during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference 2020 in San Francisco on Wednesday. SK Biopharmaceuticals has so far received two approvals from US Food and Drug Administration; one for sleep disorder treatment Sunosi (solriamfetol), licensed out to Jazz Pharmaceutical and the other for partial onset epilepsy tr

Luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce sold a record 5,152 cars globally in 2019, up 25 percent on-year. And the South Korean market was “instrumental” in this achievement with the growing popularity of its SUV Cullinan, a top executive said Jan. 7. “It has been an excellent year for our brand, and the South Korean market has seen tremendous growth -- very solid, robust and successful -- and is a market that is very important for our business,” Torsten Muller-Otvos, CEO of Roll

Eight out of 10 listed Korean companies with assets of more than 2 trillion won ($1.7 billion) were found to have no women on their boards of directors, showing that the invisible barrier to top management is still strong, data showed Sunday.Local corporate tracker Chaebol.com found that 114 of the 143 listed companies with total assets of more than 2 trillion won had no female directors based on the lists of executives submitted at general shareholders meetings last year. Hyundai Motor, SK

South Korea said Sunday that it will invest 1 trillion won ($863 million) in the next 10 years to nurture the next-generation semiconductor sector.According to the science ministry, cutting edge artificial intelligent (AI) and system-on-chip (SoC) technology, low energy consumption, high performance new devices and ultrafine fabrication processing will help the country to overcome its heavy dependence on memory semiconductors. South Korea has already spent some 1 trillion won in the past five ye