Krafton Inc., a South Korean gaming giant, said Friday that its global smash hit "PUBG: Battlegrounds" will be going free to play starting next month. The game will start a free-to-play mode on all platforms, including computers and consoles, on Jan. 12, 2022, to enable more people to enjoy the battle royale style game, Krafton said. The global-hit game, in which users fight to remain the last person alive, launched in 2017 as a paid game. It has quickly gained global popularity, s

Hanwha Engineering and Construction Corp. has been picked as the preferred bidder for a project to build a new major sports and convention industry complex in southeastern Seoul, the city government announced Friday. Seoul aims to develop some 350,000 square meters around Jamsil Sports Complex in Seoul's southeastern Songpa Ward into a comprehensive commercial complex encompassing a wide range of sectors, including sports, MICE, culture and shopping through private investments. MICE refers to

Samsung Heavy Industries Co. said Friday that it has signed a 245 billion-won ($208 million) deal to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier. The deal signed with a company in Oceania calls for Samsung Heavy Industries to deliver the vessel by May 2025, the shipbuilder said in a regulatory filing. With the latest deal, Samsung Heavy Industries has won orders worth a cumulative $12 billion so far this year, surpassing its annual order target of $9.1 billion by 32 percent. By ship, Samsun

　South Korea’s imports of golf equipment rose to a record high in the first 10 months of this year on the back of strong demand amid the pandemic, customs data showed. 　The imports of golf clubs and other related equipment reached $601 million in the January-October period, up 29.3 percent from the previous year, according to data from the Korea Customs Service. 　The reading hit an all-time high for any first 10-month period of the year. It was also higher than the yearly imports of gol

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong returned to Seoul on Thursday, ending a three-day trip to the United Arab Emirates involving a “small meeting.” “I had a small meeting in Abu Dhabi,” Lee told reporters as he arrived in Seoul, referring to a capital of the UAE. “It was a good opportunity, because experts from around the world in various fields got together to learn how each country or each industry stands ready for the future.” The de facto le

The state-run trade promotion agency Kotra and foreign chambers of commerce in Korea on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in providing economy-related educational programs for expatriates working in South Korea. The program, called “Business+ Forum,” will begin in March next year, and expatriates at the management and executive level working in foreign companies, international organizations and embassies in Korea will be able to apply for the course, accordi

A self-driving race car of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology finishes fourth at the Indy Autonomous Challenge held in Indianapolis on Oct. 23.  KAIST said Thursday that it will participate in the Autonomous Challenge, a one-on-one autonomous racing tournament scheduled to take place at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in January.

Tech giant now has almost 100 CEO candidates, including those in their 40s

LG Innotek said its chief executive Jeong Cheol-dong will receive an award from the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers on Friday for helping raise the global competitiveness of the local materials and parts industry. Jeong, known for his insight on the materials and parts market with 37 years of experience in business-to-business deals, will receive the Haedong Technology Award from the academic organization, the electronic components maker said. Having joined LG Semiconductor

Jungheung sets foothold for overseas expansion through Daewoo E&C, while Daewoo E&C secures financial stability

Business leaders in the cosmetics and beauty industry shared their thoughts on the growth potential of K-beauty on Thursday, at Trade Week 2021, a four-day global conference organized by the Seoul Business Agency to offer support for small and medium-sized enterprises in Seoul.  L’Oreal’s Chief Digital Officer Lee Seon-young kicked off the seminar, explaining how digitalization is changing the company’s business strategy. “We do not think the rise in online busine

Korea’s No. 1 milk producer by market share, Seoul Dairy Cooperative is under fire for objectifying women and portraying voyeurism in its latest video advertisement for its organic milk products. The 52-second video shows people, most of whom are presumably women, dressed in white drinking water from a stream and relaxing in a green meadow somewhere in Gangwon Province.  In the next scene, a man quietly approaches with a video camera from the cover of trees. He steps on a branch an

Global hit series No. 3 keyword for Korean users on Google

South Korean information technology solutions company LG CNS said Thursday it has teamed up with Japanese counterpart Fujitsu to strengthen its mathematical optimization consulting capacity to improve client services. LG CNS and Fujitsu‘s Korean unit has recently signed a memorandum of understanding to develop an optimization algorithm that runs on Fujitsu’s digital annealer computational architecture. Fujitsu‘s digital annealer is a quantum computing-inspired technology to s

Kyobo Life Insurance affiliates and KakaoBank signed a memorandum of understanding on data cooperation and financial platform projects, officials said Thursday. KakaoBank, South Korea’s biggest internet-only bank by user base, said it will work with Kyobo Book Centre, the country’s largest bookstore by sales, to develop and upgrade an alternative credit rating model. To do that, the lender plans to research and analyze nonfinancial data such as the history of book purchases by Kyob