South Korea's molecular diagnostics company Seegene Inc. said Tuesday it has exported 5.1 million COVID-19 test kits to Israel. The company already delivered 1.7 million diagnostic tests last month and is scheduled to deliver an additional 3.4 million tests kits this month. Israel has recently experienced a shortage of COVID-19 tests amid the fast spread of the omicron variant and an unpreceden...

A high school student’s sarcastic letter to a conscripted soldier sent as part of an encouragement campaign, has recently raised questions as to whether it is worth keeping the longstanding practice. The unfriendly letter written anonymously to a conscripted soldier was first posted at an online community site on Jan. 11, with the user complaining of the message deriding the receiver. “Is milit...

South Korean telecom carrier KT looks to launch autonomous delivery vehicles in Korea before the end of 2022 by partnering with Russian autonomous rover maker Yandex Self-Driving Group, KT said Tuesday. The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding at a Yandex office in Moscow, and are at an early stage of cooperation to integrate KT‘s artificial intelligence and digital capability...

Ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung unveiled his job growth vision Tuesday, pledging to create over 3 million jobs by raising an investment fund of 135 trillion won ($113.5 billion). "I will produce over 3 million jobs by achieving great transformations in the digital, energy and social service sectors," Lee said during a campaign event outlining his job growth vision at the Democr...

Song Ji-ah, a contestant on Netflix’s latest hit reality dating show “Single’s Inferno,” who is also known as YouTuber FreeZia, has been embroiled in controversy over wearing counterfeit luxury fashion items. Criticism flew in from online community users earlier, claiming that Song’s outfits and pieces of jewelry worn for the dating show and her YouTube clips are partially fake, which resembled ...

The government will convene an extra Cabinet meeting this week to finalize a supplementary budget plan aimed at helping small businesses hit by the pandemic, the prime minister's secretariat said Tuesday. Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum will preside over the meeting Friday, a week after he announced the government's plan to draw up an extra budget to assist small businesses and self-employed people....

North Korea on Monday test-fired a pair of “tactical guided missiles” for the first time in around two years, Pyongyang’s state media reported the following day, saying it did so to confirm the accuracy and efficiency of the weapon system “under production.” The report suggested that North Korea test-fired KN-24 short-range ballistic missiles, which look similar to the US MGM-140 Army Tactical M...

Hyundai Motor Group’s launch of B2C secondhand car business has met with headwind after the ministry put a halt on the business launch temporarily, according to the industry on Tuesday. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups last week advised the nation’s largest carmaker to temporarily suspend the launch of the certified used car sales business here. The advisory comes after the country’s associatio...

South Korean short track speed skater Shim Suk-hee has lost her injunction bid against an Olympic ban, legal sources said Tuesday, as her attempt to regain eligibility for Beijing 2022 crashed and burned. The sources said the Seoul Eastern District Court rejected Shim's application for an injunction to lift a two-month ban by the Korea Skating Union (KSU) issued in December. Shim was suspended ...

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it has teamed up with California-based chip maker Advanced Micro Devices to unveil its flagship Exynos 2200 processor chips for mobile phones, in a delayed announcement by a week. The partnership with AMD in Samsung’s processor business has boosted energy efficiency and graphic processing performance compared to predecessors like Exynos 2100, the company said. M...

The South Korean market of instant meals jumped more than 145 pct in 2020 from four years earlier on the increased number of convenience stores and the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Tuesday. Shipments of ready-to-eat items, known as home meal replacement (HMR) products in South Korea, came to 2.01 trillion won ($1.7 billion) in 2020, up a whopping 145.3 percent from 2016, according to the da...

Samsung Electronics is expected to introduce household robots under the brand “Samsung Bot” in the North American market. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization on Tuesday, the South Korean tech giant recently completed a trademark registration of Samsung Bot in the US and Canada. Samsung Bot encompasses all types of applications including industrial robots, exoskeleton robot...

LG Chem will extract oil from plastic waste and reuse it for plastic production starting in 2024. According to South Korea’s leading chemical company Tuesday, it will establish a facility in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province, where the plastic waste will be chemically recycled with extremely hot and pressurized steam. Once completed in the first quarter of 2024, the facility, with an annual ca...

The main opposition People Power Party disbanded a networking subcommittee under the election campaign committee for its presidential nominee Yoon Suk-yeol after claims arose that a shaman was involved in an advisory role for the subcommittee and took part in the campaign. Rep. Kwon Young-se, head of Yoon’s election campaign committee, told reporters Tuesday that the campaign team would disband ...