Global shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. said on Wednesday that it has signed a partnership deal with British defense company Babcock to cooperate on a project to build South Korea's first aircraft carrier. Under the deal, the two companies will team up to receive an order for the 30,000-ton aircraft, Hyundai Heavy Industries said. The project, CVX, has been pushed by the country's Navy, which is scheduled for completion in 2033. Hyundai Heavy and Babcock carried out a conceptual desig

South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed Wednesday to deepen trade ties to cope with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and make efforts to increase the supply of vaccines. Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo met ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi virtually to share ideas on ways to maintain their supply chain, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. During the meeting, ASEAN acknowledged that South Korea's New Southern Policy meant to ex

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's biggest carmaker, on Wednesday unveiled the mini SUV Casper in the latest move to diversify its product lineup. The Casper comes with a 1.0-liter multi-point injection engine or a 1.0-liter gasoline direction injection engine, the company said in a statement. Hyundai plans to launch the entry-level SUV in the domestic market within this month, a company spokesman said, without elaborating on prices or other details. (Yonhap)

DRAM prices in the spot market have recently been declining amid expectations for weaker demand stemming from widening COVID-19 vaccinations around the globe, industry sources said Wednesday. According to market tracker DRAMeXchange, the average contract price of 8-gigabit DDR4 DRAMs for PCs came to $3.889 on Monday, the lowest level in seven months. It was also down 36.8 percent from this year's high of $5.3 at the end of March. Spot prices of PC DRAMs topped the $4 mark in February before s

South Korea's 5G user base continued to expand in July to reach over 17 million users, data showed Wednesday, with the growth expected to pick up later this year on the back of launches of new devices. The total number of 5G subscriptions stood at 17.08 million in July, up around 616,000 from the previous month, according to the data from the Ministry of Science and ICT. The latest figure accounts for around 24 percent of the total 71.71 million mobile network subscriptions in the country. So

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Netmarble on Tuesday announced the launch of Metaverse Entertainment to explore business opportunities with virtual idols. According to South Korean game company, the new entity is wholly owned by Netmarble F&C, Netmarble’s development arm. F&C co-head Seo Woo-won will double as the inaugural CEO of the entertainment unit. Metaverse Entertainment will develop a virtual reality platform and offer game-related metaverse content, such as managing virtual idols, on it. Netmar

SK Global Chemical on Tuesday rebranded as SK Geo Centric to transform into an urban plastic recycling company with plans to invest 5 trillion won ($4.3 billion) by 2025. During a press conference Tuesday, CEO Na Kyung-soo presented a new direction for the firm, which has engaged in the petrochemicals business since opening the country’s first naphtha-cracking plant in 1972. Utilizing three key technologies -- solvent extraction, depolymerization and pyrolysis -- the company will turn

Renault Group set up a joint venture with China’s Geely Automobile Holdings earlier this month and plans to unveil a Renault brand hybrid passenger car in China and have Renault Samsung Motors develop an eco-friendly vehicle. For the new eco-friendly car, Renault Group said it will share technologies with Lynk & Co, a Chinese-Swedish automobile brand owned by Geely. The research and development team of Renault Samsung is expected to work on an eco-friendly car tailored to Korean cust

Hyundai Steel is launching three new subsidiary companies as part of an insourcing drive aimed at enhancing its competitiveness and the well-being of around 7,000 affiliated workers, the firm said Tuesday.  It is the first major manufacturer in the country making the move to directly hire workers from partner companies and provide them with the same benefits, the steelmaker said. The new entities are established at the locations of the firm’s major production bases -- Incheon, Poh

HDC Hyundai Development Company recently announced a number of projects to build “sustainable urban platforms” that combine residential, business, shopping and cultural facilities. The company said it aims to break ground next year to turn the Kwangwoon University Station area in Seoul’s Nowon-gu into such a space that presents “a living culture of the future.” HDC expects the residential, business, shopping and cultural facilities, where contactless payments wi

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The number of people working at restaurants and hotels dropped 64,000 on-year in July as the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic continued to weigh down on the sectors, the government said Tuesday. The total number of workers in the restaurant and hotel industry stood at 1.09 million last month, down 64,000, or 5.5 percent, from the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor. The sectors have shed workers for 18 straight months since the pandemic first exploded

Hyundai Heavy Industries Group has developed an offshore platform to store carbon dioxide under the ocean floor with the state-run Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC), the group said Tuesday. The group's two affiliates-- Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co. (KSOE) and KSOE's subsidiary Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. -- have won approval in principle (AIP) for the offshore platform from DNV, a Norwegian ship quality assurance and risk management company, it said. AIP for the platform mea