Standard Chartered Bank Korea said Thursday it signed an environmental, social and governance-related supply chain financing deal worth a combined $180 million with local electric-vehicle battery material suppliers. The lender’s new partnership with Posco Chemical and L&F will provide the EV battery material suppliers with financing in the form of trade receivable discounting. Trade receivable ...

South Korean IT solutions provider Samsung SDS said Thursday it has signed a new partnership with cloud giant Amazon Web Services to bolster bilateral ties and strengthen their corporate cloud business. Under the renewed partnership, Samsung SDS is also joining AWS’ “exclusive” global business network, along with other global partners like Verizon and NEC. The two firms have already carried out...

The K-pop music industry has extended its growth momentum this year with a surge in physical album sales in January, according to data compiled by South Korean music chart tracker Gaon Chart. The top 400 albums sold more than 4.05 million copies in and out of the country last month, up 66.9 percent from the same period previous year. The figure, however, dropped by 5.4 percentage points from Dec...

The Supreme Court on Thursday confirmed the suspended prison sentence for a former opposition lawmaker, convicting him of illegally asking a former chief of South Korean telecom giant KT Corp. to hire his daughter as a regular worker in exchange for favors. Kim Sung-tae, a former floor leader of what is now the main opposition People Power Party, was indicted on charges of intervening in parliam...

South Korea's antitrust regulator said Thursday it has decided to impose a combined 135 billion won ($112.9 million) in fines on Lotte Confectionery Co. and four other snack manufacturers for fixing sales prices of ice creams. The five snack makers, also including Binggrae Co. and Haitai Confectionery & Foods Co., colluded between February 2016 and October 2019 to fix supply and sales prices of ...

South Korea's money supply rose 0.7 percent on-month in December due mainly to an increase in savings boosted by rising interest rates and brisk exports, central bank data showed Thursday. The country's M2, a key gauge of the money supply, stood at 3,613 trillion won ($3.02 trillion) on average in December, up 23.8 trillion won from a month earlier, according to the preliminary data from the Ban...

With this new camera type, operators can zoom in on details without losing the overview picture, providing the 'best of both worlds' for maximum security HANGZHOU, China , Feb. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Hikvision has launched its new TandemVu PTZ camera range, which integrates PTZ and bullet camera capabilities into a single unit. This means that TandemVu PTZ cameras can monitor large areas a...

North Korea appears to have focused on boosting internal unity on the occasion of the 80th birth anniversary of the country's late leader Kim Jong-il, instead of using it as a chance to send a new major message to the outside world, a Seoul official said Thursday. North Korea has been holding various events to mark the anniversary, which falls on Feb. 16, with leader Kim Jong-un attending a nati...

South Korea's Navy said Thursday a local air patrol unit has reached a milestone of mishap-free flights over the past 40 years since its establishment. The Patrol Squadron 615, based on the southern resort island of Jeju, achieved the record, having logged a total flight distance of 15.3 million kilometers, equivalent to traveling around the Earth 380 times, according to the Navy. Launched in F...

TOKYO , Feb. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Asobism Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo , CEO: Tomohisa Ote ) is pleased to announce that "Vivid Knight" is now available on Google Play and App Store from Thursday, February 17, 2022 JST. Vivid Knight, the best-selling game on Steam and Nintendo Switch, is finally available on Google Play and the App Store. The game will be available in ...

One supporter displayed dolls depicting Yoon as a bear, his primary rival Rep. Hong Joon-pyo as a pig, former President Park Geun-hye as a chicken and her predecessor Lee Myung-bak as a rat. Some supporters carried signs that called for an end to the rule of the prosecution. Of course, such tactics, speeches and performances are all too common in modern day elections. There has yet to be one com...

South Korea's central bank is expected to raise its benchmark interest to 2 percent by the end of this year to tackle rising inflation and a brisk economic recovery, a local brokerage house said Thursday. Hana Financial Investment Co. said its latest forecast is 0.25 percentage point higher than its earlier projection of 1.75 percent for the end of this year. "The key rate outlook has been rais...

Science and ICT Minister Lim Hye-sook on Thursday met with the heads of three major South Korean telecom operators to discuss a dispute over additional 5G network frequency bands and urged cooperation in providing better network service to consumers. In December, the ministry agreed to open bidding for additional 5G networks in the 3.4- to 3.42-gigahertz spectrum, as requested by LG Uplus, the s...

South Korea's military will reinforce the Air Force's missile defense unit by deploying additional equipment, including advanced radars, and broadening its missions, the defense ministry said Thursday, in response to evolving threats from North Korea highlighted by its various types of missile tests of late. The ministry issued a public notice on its push for legislation to restructure the exist...

South Korea's fiscal deficit is estimated to be sharply smaller than its previous estimate last year on the back of larger-than-expected tax revenue, the finance ministry said Thursday. The consolidated fiscal balance, a key gauge of fiscal soundness, logged a deficit of 30 trillion won ($25 billion) in 2021, smaller than the government's earlier projection of 90.3 trillion won, according to pre...