South Korean slider Yun Sung-bin captured the silver medal at the first skeleton World Cup held at the new Olympic track at home on Friday.　Yun finished runner-up to Martins Dukurs of Latvia by one hundredth of a second at the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) World Cup at Alpensia Sliding Centre in PyeongChang, host of the 2018 Winter Olympics lying some 180 kilometers east of Seoul. Yoon Sung-bin (left) wins silver at skeleton World Cup (Yonhap)　The medalists were determin

For most people, moving is always an immense hassle. However, it took only two hours for 37-year-old Kim Yoon-jin and her family to pack up their belongings and move out of their residence in Seoul last month.“Granted the hired moving professionals were very speedy, our move took even less time because we own less things,” said Kim who considers herself a minimalist with little materialistic desires.There was a time when Kim cared deeply about things like making more money and living in a bigger

South Korea’s Konyang University Hospital will adopt an artificial intelligence system based on IBM’s Watson for Oncology, becoming the country’s third medical institution to embrace AI for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.SK C&C said Thursday that it signed an agreement with the university to bring IBM’s Watson for Oncology to the hospital and to digitize the hospital’s administrative system using Aibril — the firm’s big data and cloud computing platform powered by IBM’s AI software.In Kor

Yoon Young-chan, Naver’s executive vice president, recently joined the campaign team of Moon Jae-in, who is vying to be the Democratic Party of Korea presidential candidate. 　Moon’s election camp on Wednesday appointed Yoon as the chief of its social media campaign division. Yoon resigned from his post at Naver the same day. Yoon Young-chan (Yonhap)Yoon, 53, graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in geography and joined the Dong-A Ilbo in 1990, where he covered politics, social a

CALLS FOR BIOPHARMA GROWTH -- Won Hee-mok, the newly appointed chairman of the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association, called on the South Korean government to expand its investments and tax benefits to local biopharmaceutical companies during a press conference held in Seoul, Thursday. Won also pledged to make efforts to dispel all forms of bribery involved in the country’s pharmaceutical marketing and sales activities, among other plans. (KPBMA)

South Korean mobile messaging giant Kakao said Wednesday that it is offering information on the candidates competing in the country’s upcoming presidential election via its Plus Friends function on KakaoTalk.Plus Friends is a promotional platform operated by KakaoTalk. Users can befriend diverse Plus Friends accounts -- run by diverse brands and companies -- to receive notifications and content in the form of KakaoTalk messages.  (Kakao)As of Wednesday, a total of 10 Korean presidential hopefuls

Celltrion Healthcare, the sales and marketing unit of South Korean drugmaker Celltrion, received the green light to start its initial public offering process on South Korea’s secondary bourse Kosdaq on Tuesday.　The Korea Exchange has approved Celltrion Healthcare’s listing on the Kosdaq, paving the way for the company’s plans to complete its stock market debut by early April. (Celltrion Healthcare)The company is seeking to raise up to 1 trillion won ($872 million), as it has set an indicative pr

Daewoong Pharmaceutical is expected to submit its self-developed botulinum toxin Nabota for review by the US Food and Drug Administration next month, marking the first ever attempt by a South Korean company to introduce its own botulinum toxin to the US market. 　Daewoong, together with its US and Europe marketing and distribution partner Alphaeon Corp., are preparing to submit a biologics license application for DWP-450, another label for Nabota, to the FDA within the next month, a company offic

Naver will debut Tuesday its web browser Whale, which the company has been developing for the past six years to challenge the dominance of the widely-used Internet Explorer and Google Chrome browsers.　　Naver, the operator of South Korea’s largest portal website, said it will release an open beta version of its Whale browser for PCs, following a series of closed beta tests that have been ongoing since last year.　The Whale browser for Windows will become available from Tuesday, Naver said. The fir

Faced with rising pressure to raise their research and development productivity, global pharmaceutical giants are looking to partner with biotechnology and health care startups to spur their new drug and technology development.　The move comes as some of the world’s biggest pharma companies embrace “open innovation,” moving away from a closed, centralized R&D model and collaborating with external research institutes, smaller companies and individuals.French drugmaker Sanofi is reportedly searchin

Chinese electronics company TCL Corp. is reportedly reviewing plans to launch the BlackBerry KeyOne in South Korea via local carrier SK Telecom within this year.　The information was made public by Nicolas Zibell, the chief executive of TCL Communication Technology Holdings, a subsidiary of TCL Corp., who spoke to the local media in Seoul last week. The BlackBerry KeyOne presented at the MWC 2017 in Barcelona (Reuters-Yonhap)“There are around 100,000 BlackBerry users in Korea. We’re currently con

The Korea Herald is publishing a series of articles highlighting South Korea’s promising start-ups in the emerging sectors of digital health care and next-generation medical devices. This is the fourth installment. -- Ed.While humans have yet to reach Mars, unmanned missions to the planet have already begun. Since 2012, NASA’s rover Curiosity has been studying the planet’s rocks and soils by using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS. 　The technology works by shooting a high-energy lase

South Korea’s Hanmi Pharmaceutical on Thursday laid out a new set of internal compliance regulations aimed at preventing its employees from misusing undisclosed company-related information to reap illegal profits.The move comes three months after four Hanmi employees were indicted with detention for spreading undisclosed information regarding a broken licensing deal between Hanmi and Boehringer Ingelheim and reaping unlawful gains. (Hanmi Pharmaceutical)Seoul prosecutors had found that 45 offend

South Korean mobile messaging giant Kakao has introduced a new direct bank account transfer function on its simplified mobile payment platform Kakao Pay, further expanding the scope of its mobile-friendly money transfer service.　 Kakao said Thursday that it has added the “to account” money transfer function on Kakao Pay -- directly accessible via the mobile messaging app KakaoTalk -- which lets users transfer money directly to any local bank account. (Kakao)Kakao Pay is a simplified mobile payme