[THE INVESTOR] The servers of leading Korean e-commerce firm Interpark were hacked, compromising its customers’ personal information including email addresses, and phone numbers, according to news reports July 26.A group of hackers, who accessed the firm’s servers with overseas IPs, stole around 10.3 million pieces of personal data in May. A notice posted on the Interpark internet homepageThe hackers reportedly sent emails with malicious codes to Interpark employees and got access to the sensiti

[THE INVESTOR] Naver, the parent firm of mobile messenger operator LINE, said July 27 that an investors conference for the messenger firm will be held from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on July 27 in Tokyo after the second-quarter earnings report is announced at around 3 p.m. on the same day.The InvestorThe mobile messenger company went public on July 5 in Tokyo and New York and its stock price closed up 4.18 percent at 4,110 yen (US$38.70) on July 25.(theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)

[THE INVESTOR] A man in his 30s drove his car into the Korean head office of online game company Nexon in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, on July 24.A part of the glass wall on the first floor was smashed into pieces, but no injuries were reported. The man, whose nationality is reportedly Chinese, drove while intoxicated. He said in a police interrogation that he was infuriated at Nexon’s online games to which he was so addicted that he could not live an ordinary life.“The person who vandalized the o

[THE INVESTOR] A consumer group claimed on July 21 that South Korea’s three largest mobile carriers --SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus -- have made excessive profits by overpricing USIM chips for smartphones.“Utilizing their monopolistic position in the mobile market, the three firms are alleged to have earned 117.3 billion won (US$103.20 million) of unjust profits over the past two years and three months,” said Green Consumer Network in Korea. The head office of SK Telecom in Seoul The figure is bas

[THE INVESTOR] The Fair Trade Commission, the nation’s antitrust regulator, raided Internet giant Google’s Korean head office in Gangnam on July 21 as part of its investigation into allegations that the global Internet giant twisted the arms of local smartphone-makers -- Samsung and LG -- to preinstall its apps on their handsets. Google is also accused of pressuring local mobile game developers to utilize AdMob, a game ad platform run by Google. The firm, whose Android operating system has an ov

[THE INVESTOR] The first virtual reality cafe in the country will be set up in Gangnam, a posh shopping and business district in southern Seoul.Named VR Plus Show Room, the cafe will open on July 22. It will be fitted with 102 desktops, four Oculus Rifts, and four HTC Vibes.A private firm called VR Plus will run the cafe, and is expected to offer a range of virtual reality content free of charge for an unspecified period of time.“I hope the first VR cafe will become a venue where users and virtu

[THE INVESTOR] The Korean government said on July 21 it will develop the world’s first 3-D map exclusively dedicated to flying drones. According to the Ministry of Land and Transportation, the programmed route will be helpful for it to control safety of drones and prevent accidents as they are expected to be widely adopted by diverse areas such as logistics, disaster relief and agriculture in the coming years. A 3-D mapping concept for dronesThe ministry said it will be coming up with a new 3-D

[THE INVESTOR] South Korea’s three largest network operators are expected to post relatively strong earnings for the April-June period thanks to their reduced marketing costs, according to market research firm FnGuide on July 21.The combined revenues of the three companies -- KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus -- are expected to come in at 12.6 trillion won (US$11 billion) on average.The sales figure increased 2.3 percent from the same period of 2016 and 1.4 percent from the previous quarter.KT, which