Seoul needs to form deep connections to the global startup ecosystem, keynote speakers said Thursday at “Start-up Seoul: Tech-Rise 2019,” a startup convention hosted by Seoul City. The event is part of the city’s efforts to draw attention to the local startup ecosystem, called the Challenger Startup Ecosystem in a recent report by Startup Genome, meaning it has the potential to make it into the top 30 within five years. “Seoul’s size is half of the top 20 startup ec

Samsung Electronics plans to soon release a wide range of foldable smartphones, including one that folds outward, sources familiar with the matter told The Investor on Thursday. They said the out-folding phone would come ahead of Huawei Technologies’ version of the foldable phone. “The launch date has yet to be unveiled, but it’s likely to be earlier than the date set for Huawei,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity. “Suppliers have already begun m

Not many people know Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel “Sister Carrie” in South Korea. For kids here, “Carrie eonni” or Sister Carrie who introduces toys on YouTube is the “president.” Since its YouTube launch in 2014, Carrie has become an influential figure with more than two million subscribers. Early on, CarrieSoft, the company behind Carrie and Toys -- with real-person and animation characters -- has attracted investments from NHN Entertainment and

European countries pitched to attract South Korean startups during an event held at the Global Startup Festival Daejeon 2019 on Wednesday. During a sideline event called Startup Talk Concert with Foreign Embassies, officials from Finland, the Netherlands and Australia said their governments and private sector are putting a lot of efforts to nurture domestic and overseas startups. “The Australian government is putting more emphasis on startups as the country shifts from coal and mining

BANGKOK -- Thailand, an ASEAN country with a population of 69 million, is messenger platform Line’s second-largest market after Japan. In fact, 90 percent of the country’s mobile internet users are connected via Line, with the monthly number of active users amounting to 44 million. However, the company is now shifting from a messenger tool to an all-in-one app that provides various services ranging from e-commerce to contents. This not only corresponds to the increasing demand by c

South Korea’s venture capital industry finally appears to be headed toward a boom, after going through a rough patch during the dot.com bubble in the early 2000s and the global financial crisis that started in 2008. Last year alone, the country saw a record inflow of 3.8 trillion won ($3.2 billion) of venture investment. The figure for the first quarter of this year is poised to set a quarterly record. Based on such explosive growth, veteran venture capitalist Chung Sung-in, who took t

CJ is shutting down its loss-making Korean restaurant chain Bibigo in China, with a plan to dissolve the unit by August this year, according to an industry source. The move is part of restructuring of its food and beverage business due to poor profitability. It follows the closure of VIPS, the group’s family restaurant chain that ended operations in March, the source told The Investor on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity. Bibigo restaurants in China took up half of the total n

A hair drug test for K-pop singer and actor Park Yoo-chun has returned a positive result, according to police here. Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency, which is investigating Park’s case, received the test result from the National Forensic Service on Monday. Police are seeking an arrest warrant for Park. The hair sample, taken from his leg, was collected April 16 and sent for examination. A urine drug test earlier that day had returned a negative result.Park Yoo-chun leaves a police station

For the first time since it was founded in 2002, South Korean game developer Smilegate is out to list an affiliate in a bid to diversify its portfolio. Smilegate is the developer of hugely popular shooting game “CrossFire,” which boasts about 650 million users in some 80 countries. Its accumulated overseas sales exceeded 10 trillion won ($8.78 billion) as of April 2018. Contrary to company statements saying it is “simply testing the waters,” industry watchers con

South Korea’s retail firm E-Land World is set to sell its subsidiary K-Swiss to a Chinese sports brand six years after it purchased the US company, industry sources said on April 10. E-Land World is scheduled to sign a stock purchase agreement with Xtep this month for about 300 billion won ($262 million), the sources said. A spokesperson declined to confirm the deal with XTep but said that the company has been in talks with many potential buyers since early this year. The Korean re

As South Korea’s venture investment hit a record high last year, Korea Venture Investment, South Korea’s fund of funds management institute, saw a jump in revenue growth, data from the Financial Supervisory Service showed on April 4. KVIC logged operating sales of 22.9 billion won ($20.1 million) and operating profit of 6.4 billion won, growing 38.59 percent and 385.76 percent, respectively. Its revenue soared 456.01 percent to 5.3 billion won during the same period, the company&rs

Terarosa, a coffee chain based in Gangneung,a city in the province of Gangwon, on the east coast of South Korea, has secured investment from the country’s leading impact venture fund that invest in companies creating soical innovations. The joint fund set up by Crevisse Partners and Lime Asset Management called Crevisse-Lime Impact Venture Fund decided to invest in the 15-year-old coffee chain that has 14 outlets around the country, an official at Crevisse told The Investo

Sweden-based audio streaming platform Spotify is poised to enter the South Korean digital music market worth 1 trillion won ($880 billion), according to the Electronic Times on March 18. The local media report cited anonymous sources in the industry noting that the Swedish firm has initiated negotiations with copyright collectives to discuss the distribution rates of contents. Some Apple Korea employees have also already signed on to join Spotify Korea.  “The demand for K-pop mu

The concept of the “sharing economy” has caught on in Korea, but not as much as the enthusiasts had imagined. Uber, the most controversial example, was unable to enter for legal reasons, and others such as Airbnb-like house-sharing services are still fumbling to overcome regulatory hurdles. In a way, coworking spaces are the lone shining star in the sector, with experts predicting the trend to continue for years. A big part of the reason is because of the steady growth of knowled

A key hurdle the Korean economy faces is the fast-aging population. One way to coax a soft-landing of this problem is to speed up deregulation so that local startups can carry out innovation and improve productivity, according to Startup Alliance Korea Managing Director Lim Jung-wook.  “Considering how fast South Korea is aging, we really should have a sense of urgency. Instead of spending too much time and energy fighting superficial issues such as whether or not to allow carpoo