Shares of SK Chemicals soared sharply Friday, a day after the chemicals and drug developer announced that it signed a contract manufacturing deal for British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company AstraZeneca’s diabetes medicines. Its shares started at 79,800 won ($62.27) as of 9 a.m., a 23 percent jump from the previous trading day. In the afternoon, the stocks were traded slightly lower at 72,200 won, still up around 11 percent from a day ago. In its regulatory fi

The state-run Korea Development Bank and Korea Ocean Business Corp., the two largest shareholders of debt-ridden shipping company HMM, are seeking to sell their shares for at least 5 trillion won ($3.9 billion), according to industry sources Friday. The two organizations said they are selling a combined 40.65 percent controlling stake in HMM, together with perpetual convertible bonds worth 2.68 trillion won. A perpetual bond has no maturity date and can be converted into equity. From 2018 to 2

A new art museum featuring some 23,000 artworks collected by the late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee is expected to be built in central Seoul in 2028 after getting regulatory approval Thursday. The museum was one of the six construction projects whose feasibility reviews gained approval from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Following his death in 2020, his family donated a total of 23,181 art pieces previously owned by Lee. The collection includes various masterpieces by renowned Korean

South Korea’s government procurement agency said Friday it is ramping up support for local companies to accelerate their expansion into overseas markets and boost the nation’s exports overall. Affiliated with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Public Procurement Service oversees and manages contracts of goods, services and construction to facilitate the procurement and supply of goods for the public sector. PPS Administrator Kim Yoon-sang also renewed the agency’s commitm

Korean proptech eyes bigger presence in Japan, with Singapore being next target market

  KB Financial Group on Thursday announced the details of its candidate selection process for a new chairman ahead of the upcoming shareholders’ meeting, set to take place in November. The group's Chairman Candidate Recommendation Committee held its first meeting on Thursday and decided on the procedure to shortlist candidates. On Aug. 8, the committee plans to draw up a shortlist of six candidates, and on Aug. 29, it will conduct the first round of interviews and narrow down the sh

South Korea’s artificial intelligence startup Upstage said Thursday it has secured the top position in the global evaluation of large language models. The company’s 30-billion-parameter LLM scored 67 points, ahead of Meta’s LLaMa-2 (66.8 points) on the Open LLM Leaderboard operated by the AI platform, Hugging Face, as of Wednesday. Hugging Face’s leaderboard evaluates LLMs with less than 100 billion parameters on four key indicators: model’s reasoning challenge,

South Korea's antitrust regulator on Thursday announced it has decided to assess 40.9 billion won ($32.3 million) of fines for 32 pharmaceutical firms and wholesalers for colluding to secure orders for the government’s vaccine procurement bids. The 32 companies included global pharmaceutical firm GSK, GC Biopharma, Yuhan, Boryung and SK Discovery, which has SK Plasma and SK Bioscience as subsidiaries. Under the the Fair Trade Commission's decision, Korea Vaccine Sales will receiv

Starbucks is collaborating with the world's biggest girl group Blackpink this summer. Starbucks Korea on Thursday announced that the brand has teamed up with Blackpink to release limited edition merchandise, beverage and food items this summer. The latest collaboration project will be launched in the Asia-Pacific region, with the drinks and merchandise items available in nine regions in Asia, including South Korea and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, bakery menu items will only be sold in South Korea.

SK Square, the investment arm of SK Group, has completed the process of selling a portion of its stake in its security service subsidiary SK Shieldus to EQT Partners, a private equity fund operated by Sweden's largest conglomerate, the Wallenberg Group, a filing showed Thursday. SK Square said it has sold 28.82 percent of its stake in Korea Security Holdings, the parent firm of SK Shieldus, for about 860 billion won ($684 million). EQT Partners acquired a 36.9 percent stake in SK Square and

Hyundai Motor Group said Thursday it has developed six kinds of nanotechnologies that will be key drivers of growth in future mobility, ranging from autonomous driving cars to software defined vehicles. Nanotechnology creates new materials by synthesizing or fabricate arrays of materials that are 1 billionth of a meter in width. “Only when we secure top level materials technology in mobility can we improve the performance and durability of car parts and vehicles which will offer a competit

Samsung, SK, Hyundai, LG donate a combined W10b

The “SK Boulevard” debuted in Jackson Country in the US state of Georgia on Wednesday, replacing the former Steve Reynolds Industrial Parkway in recognition of the contributions of SK Battery America to the local economy, SK On, the battery making unit of SK Group said Thursday. The announcement was made at a signage ceremony at SKBA's Georgia facility attended by key local figures including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Commerce City Mayor Clark Hill, and Jackson County Chamber of C

In South Korea, 69 percent of adult smartphone users use a Samsung device, while only 23 percent use iPhones, a Gallup survey of 1,001 adults found. But the survey reveals a starkly different trend in one demographic: younger millennials and Gen Z. Among the younger generation, aged 18 to 29, iPhone’s share rises to 65 percent, double the Samsung's 32 percent, the survey found. This represents a 13 percent increase in iPhone use from last year and stands in sharp contrast to older coh

Samsung Electronics announced Wednesday that it will not charge any fees to card issuers in Korea for its digital wallet service, Samsung Pay. "We have decided to keep Samsung Pay commission-free," a Samsung official said in a statement. “Samsung Electronics is dedicated to enhancing the development of the domestic payment ecosystem by maintaining ongoing partnerships with local card companies, all while delivering the finest Samsung Pay service to consumers.” Samsung has