Nutrilite’s quality assurance manager talks about “seed to product” botanical traceability system

Samsung Electronics Co. is expected to post a record operating profit of 17.2 trillion won (US$15.4 billion) in the third quarter, backed by firm demand for memory chips, market sources said Tuesday. 　The consensus by major brokerage firms marks an 18.5 percent on-year increase in the tech behemoth‘s profit for the July-September period. The revenue is forecast at 65.2 trillion won, up 5.1 percent from a year ago. 　The company is expected to release its third-quarter earnings preview next Friday

Louis Vuitton was the most frequently counterfeited foreign brand in South Korea over the past five years, a report showed on Saturday.According to data from the Korea Customs Service, government regulators uncovered imitation Louis Vuitton products valued at 183.1 billion won ($163.99 million) between 2014 and June this year, which is the largest value among counterfeited foreign luxury brands.  (Yonhap)The value assessment was in terms of genuine Louis Vuitton goods.Given that more than 41.1 b

LG Chem, South Korea’s leading chemicals company, held an event to bolster communication and understanding between millennial employees and executives, the company said Friday.The event was led by six new employees under the topic “happy companionship with millennials” during a workshop for some 300 executives, factory managers and chief researchers at its leadership center in Osan City, Gyeonggi Province, earlier this week. The participating newbies talked openly about the millennial generation

Hyundai Motor Group Chief Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun is expected to return home over the weekend after a weeklong trip to the US to persuade officials to allow exemptions from auto tariffs, industry insiders said Friday.According to Hyundai Motor, Chung flew to the US earlier this week to meet with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and officials to convey the automaker’s concerns and economic contributions, amid US President Donald Trump’s push to slap 25 percent tariffs on imported automobiles.Th

South Korean biopharma company GC Pharma said Friday that the US Food and Drug Administration has delayed the approval of the firm’s immunodeficiency drug IVIG-SN, demanding additional data related to the drug’s manufacturing procedures.The company had initially expected the US FDA to grant final approval for IVIG-SN, short for human normal immunoglobulin G for intravenous administration, this month.The company noted that the drug’s safety and efficacy are solid, as the product is already being

Hanwha Energy Corp. and Korea Midland Power Corp. will build a solar power plant in the United States by 2020, Hanwha Group said Friday. The construction of a 150-megawatt solar power plant is scheduled to begin in December 2019 and to be completed a year later in Boulder City, southeast of Nevada, the conglomerate said in a statement.  (Yonhap)Hanwha Energy will be responsible for development and power generation of the plant, with Korea Midland Power contributing its know-how in power generati

Dunamu, the operator of South Korea’s leading cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, said Friday its blockchain tech research lab Lambda256 has released a beta version of its decentralized app, or dApp, builder solution “Luniverse.”Luniverse is the Dunamu-owned research unit’s proprietary blockchain service development platform that lets developers build various dApps and run token economy systems in an easier and faster manner. Using Luniverse, developers can immediately launch their planned blockchain

The National Assembly on Thursday passed a bill that grants a regulatory sandbox for new businesses in the information and communication technology sector, a development that is expected to speed up the adoption and commercialization of next-generation technologies in Korea. The bill to amend the Special Act on Promotion and Vitalization of Convergence of Information and Communications Technology was passed into law on Thursday, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.The changes include th

South Korea's economy is expected to grow at a slower than expected pace this year, a Paris-based international organization said Thursday.In its interim economic outlook, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development expected Asia's fourth-largest economy to grow 2.7 percent this year, lower than its previous estimate of 3 percent growth made in May.For next year, the OECD also slashed its growth outlook to 2.8 percent from the previous 3 percent. (Yonhap)The OECD said the Korean ec

The business leaders who accompanied South Korean President Moon Jae-in to North Korea this week returned to Seoul full of emotion, saying the trip had been worthwhile for the chance to see the North with their own eyes, but at the same time maintaining that it was premature to discuss doing business there. “It can be said that we went (to the North) to hear what they had to say. It was significant to have been able to witness North Korea with our own eyes. We tried to take in as much as possibl

Celltrion said Thursday that it had signed an “incubation” agreement with US-based Emory University to jointly research and develop new drug candidates for atherosclerosis.　An incubation agreement is an open innovation arrangement in which a firm provides its resources and business capabilities, such as research facilities, workforce and operations consulting, to an external research institute.The arrangement aims to ensure the autonomy of the research while obtaining preferential rights to disc

Global pharmaceutical companies operating in South Korea locally invested a combined 271 billion won ($242 million) in clinical research and development in 2017, marking a 5.9 percent increase in R&D funding from the previous year, according to the Korea Research-based Pharma Industry Association.　KRPIA is a business association consisting of the Korean units of 28 foreign pharma companies, including Allergan, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfize

Coupang’s Rocket Delivery has surpassed 1 billion deliveries four years after the South Korean e-commerce firm started the end-to-end service, the company said Thursday.To bring innovation to the e-commerce market, the company has built its own logistics center and hired deliverymen to handle the entire process from product purchase to door-to-door delivery. The speed of the service is key so customers can receive the products they ordered the next day, the company said. Rocket Delivery is the f

Hyundai Motor will supply 1,000 hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks to Europe over the next five years, making its debut on the continent’s green commercial vehicle market, the company said Thursday.The South Korean carmaker signed a memorandum of understanding with Swiss hydrogen company H2 Energy at the trade show IAA Commercial Vehicles 2018 held in Hanover. H2 Energy Chairman Rolf Huber (second from left) speaks at a press conference held on the sidelines of IAA Commercial Vehicles 2018 in Han