South Korean midsized builder HDC Hyundai Development Co. said Friday that it has received approval from Russian aviation authorities for HDC’s planned takeover of flag carrier Asiana Airlines, but added that renegotiation of the acquisition terms is still underway. Regarding the merger deal involving the air carrier, HDC had to receive approval from six of the nations that Asiana flies to as a prerequisite.  HDC had planned to complete the deal by the end of April after regulators

LG Electronics is aggressively launching its PuriCare products overseas, the company said Friday. The electronics giant‘s three representative air purifying products are a 360 degrees-rotation air purifier, a portable mini air purifier and an industrial-sized air purifier. The LG PuriCare 360 Air Purifier has already been launched in the US, China, Japan, India and Thailand. Additionally, it will become available in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Vietnam and Hungray this year.

AMPAC Fine Chemicals, one of the constituents of the consolidated global pharmaceuticals contract manufacturing organization SK Pharmteco, said Friday that it has appointed Jeff Butler as the new president. Butler was previously vice president of project management at AFC. Promoted as the president, Butler is now responsible for operations across all US-based facilities, AFC said. “Jeff has been very instrumental in the growth of AFC. His technical leadership coupled with his busine

Amid the aggravating political sentiment between US and China over the imposition of Hong Kong‘s security law, South Korean conglomerates with overseas branches in Hong Kong can possibly seek to relocate their offices to different cities, a report said Friday.  On Thursday, US lawmakers unanimously approved new Hong Kong-related sanctions that would penalize banks which do business with Chinese officials, after the Chinese government imposed a security law that has been widely conde

After benefiting from the growing non-contact market in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in the first six months of this year, chipmakers are again faced with a bearish outlook for the remaining half of the year due to estimated falls in chip prices. In the third quarter, there are predominant forecasts that say the prices of both DRAM and NAND flashes will decline, leading to a slower growth of the overall memory market. According to market tracker DRAMeXchange, the fixed price of DDR4 8

Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday it has reopened a refrigerator production line in South Korea after closing the facility a day earlier due to virus concerns. Samsung said its refrigerator factory in Gwangju, some 330 kilometers southwest of Seoul, resumed operation in the morning after a worker who was suspected to have come in contact with a virus patient tested negative for COVID-19. The company on Thursday halted refrigerator production at the plant to prevent the possible spread of

Sales of imported vehicles in South Korea jumped 41 percent in June from a year earlier on tax cuts and new models, an industry association said Friday. The number of newly registered foreign vehicles rose to 27,350 units last month from 19,386 a year earlier, the Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association (KAIDA) said in a statement. "A reduction in individual consumption taxes and new model launches particularly by Audi Volkswagen Korea helped buoy the monthly sales,&quo

A South Korean research team has discovered a way to ramp up the storage capacity of memory chips by 1,000 times, while raising the possibility of utilizing 0.5 nanometer process technology, the Ministry of Science on ICT announced Thursday. Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology’s Energy and Chemical Engineering professor Lee Jun-hee and his team have published a report on the discovery to international academic journal Science, winning attention from peers and the semicond

GS Caltex is expanding an upcycling method that goes further than simply recycling plastic waste and creates new value by mixing materials. The firm said it plans to increase the production of compounded resin made from recycled plastic waste to streamline resources and reduce carbon emissions. Compound resin is a functional plastic widely used as a raw material for automotive and home appliance parts. If plastic waste is recycled to produce compounded resin instead of being incinerated, c

KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo stressed that the fifth-generation network would allow telecommunication firms to create new business opportunities across various industries, the company said Thursday. “If the telecommunications firms used to center on business-to-consumer services in the past, the industry will be involved more in the business-to-business sector in the future,” KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo said in a keynote speech during the Global TD-LTE Initiative’s online summit on Wednesday.

It’s been 18 years since Porsche released the Cayenne, its first sport utility vehicle, but skeptics still questioning the vehicle’s “Porsche DNA.” Undeterred, the carmaker has continued to bolster its SUV lineup, and sales show Porsche’s decision was right. Its SUV sales now double those of smaller sports cars in some markets, including the US. In Korea, the Cayenne is attributed as having set the pace for the popularity of premium SUVs. This year, the carma

South Korean and European business experts held an online forum Thursday to discuss ways to jointly respond to challenges in the wake of the pandemic and strengthen cooperation in areas such as future mobilities, secondary batteries and bio-health. As a follow-up event to the summit between the two regions, the EU-Korea Virtual Business Conference 2020 was jointly hosted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the European Chamber of Commerce in Korea. The conference aimed to discus

It’s not everyday that one feels attracted to a refrigerator, but Samsung’s new fridge is too beautiful to call it just a machine. Samsung Electronics on Thursday invited reporters to a studio in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul, to showcase its premium “New Chef Collection” refrigerator amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Inside the dimly-lit studio stood the $10,000 refrigerator with a chic metallic design, which immediately defied the monotonous and boring look of a typic

Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. said Thursday their sales in the United States fell 19 percent in June from a year earlier as the new coronavirus continued to affect vehicle sales. Hyundai, Hyundai's independent Genesis brand and Kia sold a combined 99,434 vehicles in the US market last month, down from 122,890 units a year ago, according to the companies' sales data. The carmakers had planned to focus on boosting sales in the world's most important automobile market thi

Jeju Air's Eastar takeover on brink of collapse amid pandemic Jeju Air Co.'s planned takeover of smaller budget carrier Eastar Jet Co. appears to be on the brink of falling through as Jeju Air asked Eastar Jet to settle all of its debts by mid-July to proceed with the deal. In March, Jeju Air signed a deal to acquire a controlling 51.17 percent stake in Eastar Jet from Eastar Holdings for 54.5 billion won as part of its expansion strategy despite the new coronavirus' growing impact on the air