Burger King issued an apology Friday, after a plastic wrapper was found inside a burger sold at one of its stores in Sejong. “Burger King would like to sincerely apologize to the customer for the inconvenience,“ the US burger chain said in a statement. ”We are currenly investigating how the substance got into the food. Burger King will increase efforts to improve the quality of our products and services.“ On Thursday, a male customer told local media he found a she

South Korea on Friday launched an early warning system to monitor some 4,000 key industry materials and items to prevent the recurrence of a crisis similar to the ongoing supply crunch of urea solution used to reduce emissions in diesel vehicles. The shortage of urea solution has exposed vulnerabilities in the country's supply chain and prompted the government to set up a task force on economic security meant to ensure stable supply chains. Items listed on the early warning system include magn

Construction machinery maker Hyundai Construction Equipment said Friday it has obtained orders for 534 units of construction equipment from Russia this month. The deals with unidentified Russian miners and builders include orders for 510 excavators, 15 wheel loaders and nine skid-steer loaders, Hyundai Construction Equipment said in an emailed statement. The construction equipment will be delivered by the first quarter of next year and used at the construction sites and coal mines in Russia, t

Hyundai Motor Group said Friday that its fully electric model Ioniq 5 has been picked as the German car of the year.  The judges, comprised of 20 automotive journalists working in Germany, evaluated the vehicle based on categories including practicality, driving performance, innovation, market fit as well as a separate riding test.  A total of 45 newly released cars competed for this year’s award. Except Ioniq 5, Peugeot 308, Kia EV6, Audi E-Tron GT and Porsche 911 GT3 made i

  Lotte Group has hired Kim Sang-hyun, former vice president of market rival Homeplus, to lead Lotte Shopping, which controls all the group’s retail business, officials said Thursday. The group’s hotel department will be led by Ahn Se-jin, former CEO of the Korean restaurant chain Nolboo. Kim Gyo-hyun, former head of Lotte Chemical, was promoted to vice president in recognition of his achievements in restoring the fortunes of the group’s chemical business to pre-pandemic

Tech giant’s chief strategist Cho Joo-wan will double as CEO

JB Financial Group said on Thursday it has established an integrated big data platform which brings together the data of all of its affiliates and uses artificial intelligence technology to offer customized service. The “data hub” converges the financial data of affiliates and public data, and applies the group’s internal cloud technology to allow data analysis from an integrated perspective, JB Financial said. Using the data hub, affiliates of JB Financial can analyze custom

The Korean Federation of Community Credit Cooperatives will hold a joint webinar with its counterpart in Thailand on Friday under the theme “The Role of Financial Cooperatives and Future Directions.” The webinar is designed to discover the value of financial cooperatives in the two countries and seek ways to cooperate, the KFCC said. Students and officials at cooperatives as well as participants from Myanmar, Laos, Fiji and Uganda will take part in the three-hour webinar. The semin

Samsung Biologics and Boston-based biotech firm GreenLight Biosciences have teamed up to help make COVID-19 vaccines more accessible to people in poor countries, especially in Africa, the Korean pharmaceutical company said Thursday.  Under a contract manufacturing deal signed earlier in the day, Samsung Biologics will produce drug substances for GreenLight’s messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate.  The drugmaking unit of Samsung Group said it is adding new production facilit

Hyundai Motor Group said Thursday it would test its Level 4 autonomous driving system in downtown Seoul under its new mobility service “RoboRide,” using its fully electric compact Ioniq 5 as early as next year. The Korean auto giant said running RoboRide will be set the grounds for the company’s advancement of self-driving tech, in a step toward the commercialization of uncrewed mobility services. “We’ve been developing autonomous driving technology for all to mov

Biannual auto extravaganza, though downsized under COVID, exhibits heated race for green technology

Kakao Brain, an AI technology research and development subsidiary of Kakao, said Thursday it will upgrade its Korean-language AI model to go full swing in promoting the development of local AI industry. According to the AI company, it plans to enhance the deep learning process of KoGPT, Kako Brain’s Korean- language AI model, and make it 100 times more efficient by using Google Cloud’s supercomputer, Google Tensor Processing Unit. Google TPU is a large-scale computing system that

Kakao Corp. said Thursday co-CEO Yeo Min-soo has been named to lead the operator of South Korea's top mobile messenger, KakaoTalk, for another four years. Kakao said its board of directors also selected Ryu Young-joon, who has served as the chief of Kakao's payment arm, Kakao Pay, as a new co-CEO of Kakao. Yeo, who has been leading Kakao since March 2018, will begin a second four-year term as a co-CEO with Ryu at a board meeting slated for March. "I will faithfully serve my role in this

South Korea plans to halt the operation of some coal-powered plants over the winter in a move to reduce fine dust emissions, the industry ministry said Thursday. The operation of eight to 16 coal-powered plants will be suspended from December through February, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy. The country now has 53 coal plants. Up to 46 plants can be required to maintain their power output at 80 percent of capacity depending on the fine dust situation, the ministry ad

South Korea's antitrust regulator said Thursday it has decided to impose a combined fine of 340 million won ($285,000) on two transport companies for rigging bids to win three projects by the country's major shipbuilder, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. In 2014, Sebang Co. and Dongbang Transport Logistics Co. colluded to fix their price quotations on a transport project to make sure Saebang won the deal. After winning the bidding, Sebang assigned part of the order to Dongbang Tr