Digital service makes up 80% of music industry in Korea, the world’s highest shareIt has been almost two years since Kim Min-jeong, a 29-year-old office worker, bought a recorded album. This was at almost exactly the same time as when she started using her iPhone from 2009. “I used to buy CDs and download songs to iPod. Now I prefer listening to music directly via my smartphone and feel it unnecessary to carry extra devices,” she said. The number of smartphone users surpassed the 20 million mark

Angry farmers protest over cattle price fall, hike of feeding costsThe nation’s cattle breeding farms are being severely hit by the fall in beef cattle prices as a result of an oversupply of homebred cows and by soaring animal feed prices. Male dairy calves used for veal are being put up for sale at 10,000 won per head, but it is still not easy to find buyers.A cattle breeder in Sunchang, North Jeolla Province, buried nine cows that starved to death earlier this week as he could no longer afford

Samsung Electronics predicted on Friday that its quarterly operating profit has hit a fresh high, spurred by robust smartphone sales and the selloff of its hard-disk drive unit.Operating profit shot up a staggering 72.8 percent on-year to 5.2 trillion won ($4.5 billion) between October and December 2011, the world’s largest maker of handsets and memory chips said in a regulatory filing. The preliminary results beat the average market projection of 4.81 trillion won. Analysts estimate 16.2 trilli