South Korea's customs office said Thursday that one of the country's leading department store chains, Hyundai Department Store, has won the license to operate a duty-free shop in downtown Seoul.Hyundai Department Store, the sole candidate, was picked to operate the duty-free outlet at Dongdaemun, northeastern Seoul, according to the Korea Customs Service. The site was previously operated by conglomerate Doosan Group,Hyundai Department Store has operated a duty-free shop at its Trade Center branc

Executives in their 60s are likely to leave, passing their batons to younger leaders

KT, South Korea’s second-largest mobile carrier, announced Thursday the launch of artificial intelligence-equipped 4K over-the-top media service, declaring its intention to enter global markets. Dubbed as Seezn -- a new combination of words see and citizen -- the KT OTT service uses a AI-based content recommendation feature that recognizes facial expressions of users and analyses the movements to suggest customized content in line with their mood. Users can also personalize the service by

MUTUAL GROWTH/ BANKKB KOOKMIN BANKSouth Korea’s leading lender KB Kookmin Bank has been supporting early-stage entrepreneurs by conducting a mentoring and consulting program called KB Soho Mentoring School.The bank on Nov. 1 held a graduation ceremony for participants to the second round of the program dedicated to those starting a social enterprise.  Some 40 early-stage entrepreneurs have participated in the seven-week-long program to obtain professional skills as a small business ow

GS Energy, the energy unit of GS Group, said Thursday that it has signed a deal with Vietnam’s VinaCapital to build a liquefied natural gas power plant there.Through the collaborative partnership, the two firms will build a megasized LNG power plant with total capacity of 3 gigawatts in the southern region of Vietnam. All electricity generated from this power plant will be provided nationwide via a power purchase agreement with Vietnam’s state-run power company Vietnam Electricity.&n

Mercedes-Benz Korea said Thursday that it has delivered its new EQC to the model’s first customer in South Korea. The vehicle, launched here Oct. 22, is the German carmaker’s first full electric vehicle under the EQ brand.The delivery ceremony at the EQ Future Pavilion in Seoul’s Sinsa-dong was attended by Lee Sang-kuk, vice president of sales at Mercedes-Benz Korea, and Mark Raine, the company’s vice president of products and marketing. They delivered the new EQC to

South Korea’s Pulmuone announced Thursday that its wholly owned US subsidiary has gained 75 percent market share in the third quarter.Pulmuone entered the US tofu market by acquiring the nation’s top brand Nasoya in 2016 to establish nationwide distribution channels and its market share, according to Nielsen’s data, increased from 4.9 percent in 2015 to 69.5 percent that year.　The company said the total sales of Pulmuone Foods USA was around $90 million in 2015 prior to the acq

Storytel, a Sweden-based audio book streaming provider, officially launched a Korean service Thursday, tapping the tech-savvy Asian country with an underdeveloped market for audio books.South Korea is now one of the 19 countries Storytel is currently servicing since its founding in 2005 in the Scandinavian country.South Korea is the third Asian country Storytel has tapped into so far, following India and Singapore. Including the Korean language, Storytel has a catalogue of 300,000 titles in 20 d

This year’s exports to fall 10.2 percent amid economic slowdown, lower oil and chip prices

SK networks, GS Home Shopping, Hanwha Systems join Klaytn Governance Council; Kakao blockchain wallet Klip coming in early 2020

South Korea's transportation sector sales gained ground for the fourth year in a row in 2018 due mainly to an increase in air services, government data showed Thursday.The combined sales of local transportation firms totaled 146.9 trillion won ($124.5 billion) in the one-year period, up 3.3 percent from 142.2 trillion won tallied the year before, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea. Land transportation companies saw their sales rise 1.8 percent to 65.3 trillion won, and storage an

US social networking giant Facebook Inc. said Thursday it has released an updated report on how it has been making efforts to detect content that violates community rules to proactively remove it from both Facebook and Instagram.The report contains data and metrics that show which categories are the most problematic in terms of violations of Facebook rules and the number of cases that violated regulated standards.Among the wide variety of content were child nudity, child sexual exploitation and

South Korea said Thursday it will suspend the operation of coal-powered plants over the winter to reduce fine dust emissions.Eight to 15 coal power plants will suspend operations from Sunday to Feb. 29, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Other plants will be instructed to maintain their power output at 80 percent of capacity depending on demand. Through such efforts, South Korea is expected to reduce the emission of fine dust by 44 percent compared to a year earlier over th

The number of foreigners visiting local duty-free shops surpassed 1.8 million last month, hitting the highest monthly mark since late 2016, industry data showed Thursday.Statistics provided by the Korean Duty Free Association said more than 1.8 million foreigners visited duty-free stores in the country in October, the highest number since China's apparent retaliation against Seoul over the deployment of a US missile defense shield here. The number of foreign shoppers at the duty-free stores reac

Samsung Electronics Co. has agreed to supply central processing units for computers to Intel Corp. to help address the US chipmaker's chip supply issues, industry sources said Thursday. Intel has been struggling to meet demand for 14-nanometer chips for PCs since late 2018 and recently issued an apology to its customers for shipment delays. According to semiconductor industry sources, Intel has chosen Samsung to be its third-party foundry to ramp up its 14-nm production capacity as part of