The financial regulator will step up efforts to ease regulations for credit card companies to help them weather difficult business conditions amid the slowing economy, its chief said Tuesday.“We’ll look into loosening regulations for credit card firms so that they can innovate themselves and find new sources of profits,” Gov. Choi Soo-hyun of the Financial Supervisory Service told reporters ahead of a meeting with heads of major card companies. The regulator will consider allowing credit card co

ULSAN ― The offshore yard in Ulsan run by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the nation’s top shipbuilder, is a surprisingly interesting place to explore. The focus on offshore plants makes for a much more diverse range of construction than at conventional shipyards, and increased orders in recent years have the place buzzing.According to HHI, as of June, seven different offshore plants are being built in the world’s largest offshore yard, which covers 215 acres. Those include modules for the Barrow Isla

Autoelex has become the producer of the world’s largest number of small and medium-sized digital incubator models, the Korean manufacturer of poultry hatchers and brooders said. Launched in 1991, Autoelex rolled out its first digital hatcher and brooder “RCOM” in 2004. Currently the flagship RCOM series is exported to 40 countries including the U.S., Britain, Germany, Denmark and China, and distributed by about 70 local companies. The hatcher is exclusively distributed by major brooder companies

Ever since Min Hyung-jong took office as the administrator of Korea’s Public Procurement Service last March, he has tried to be out in the field instead of behind his desk, meeting small and medium enterprises or suppliers.His efforts to get close to SMEs, to listen to their concerns and thoughts on ways to improve the supplier industry, has gained him the reputation of “someone you can really talk to.”As a procurement specialist for over 30 years, Min said it was important for him to visit as m

Ryu Kwang-su, director general of the international affairs bureau at the Korea Forest Service, talked about the global community’s efforts for anti-desertification and Korea’s related activities during an interview with The Korea Herald this week. The government official stressed the importance of global efforts to prevent deserts, saying it is more effective than restoring them ex post facto.The following are questions and answers from the interview.Q: The 10th U.N. Convention to Combat Desert

  The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has recently announced the winners of the 2013 Land for Life Awards to promote anti-desertification campaigns and organizations.The announcement was made on June 17, the 19th anniversary of the World Day to Combat Desertification which was created in 1994 to celebrate the adoption of the UNCCD.A total cash prize of $100,000 was distributed to development organizations from India, Mexico and Australia, for their contribution to sustainable

Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S4 is the fastest smartphone among the best-selling brands in the market, according to a test by U.K.’s watchdog released on Tuesday.The organization named ”Which?“ used a speed-testing system called Geekbench to evaluate the processing and memory speed of seven representative cell phone brands.Galaxy S4, ranked at the top, scored 3,188 points while Apple’s iPhone5 scored 1,664, ranking at the bottom with its score barely reaching half that of Samsung.“If a phone has

Kakao Talk, the nation’s top mobile messenger, is generating controversy over its PC version, which collects the MAC addresses of users’ devices, according to IT sources on Tuesday.The beta version of the Kakao PC platform was released on June 20 and users can download and install the program on their desktops after going through a sign-up and authentication process. MAC, or media access control, is an alpha-numeric address assigned to each PC connected to the Internet. Collecting MAC address co