The reigning South Korean baseball champions KT Wiz re-signed its free agent third baseman Hwang Jae-gyun on Monday. The Wiz said Hwang agreed to a four-year deal worth 6 billion won ($5.1 million). He will earn 2.9 billion won in total salary, 2.5 billion won in signing bonus and up to 600 million won in incentives. Hwang's previous four-year contract, valued at 8.8 billion won, expired at the...

South Korea's exports to the so-called New Southern and Northern regions are likely to touch all-time highs in 2021 on Seoul's efforts to deepen economic ties with those regions, the trade ministry said Monday. Seoul's overseas shipments to the New Southern Region -- the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and India -- reached $111.9 billion in the first 11 months of this year, accord...

The number of franchise outlets in South Korea rose more than 9 percent in 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic, but their sales dropped for the first time since 2013, data showed Monday. Franchise stores numbered 235,709 as of end-December last year, up 9.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea. Food and beverage franchise outlets expanded at double-d...

LG Display is the only company to have commercialized large OLED screens that are semitransparent. Its 55-inch OLED displays with 40 percent transparency were first introduced in 2019, and have since been applied in shopping malls, museums and subways. LG has forecast the transparent OLED display market to grow 116 percent on average each year in the next decade, with the market size estimated a...

Kim Beom-su, the founder of South Korean internet giant Kakao Corp., and members of his family were accused by a civic group Monday of a massive tax evasion in a past corporate merger process. Spec Watch Korea lodged the accusation against Kim and his family members, including his brother-in-law, with the National Police Agency, alleging they evaded a total of 886.3 billion won ($747.6 million) ...

SEJONG -- The gross regional domestic product (GRDP) for provinces and cities in South Korea inched up in 2020 from a year earlier amid restrictions on business operations caused by the pandemic, data showed Monday. According to the data provided by Statistics Korea, the GRDP came to 1,936 trillion won ($1.63 trillion) in 2020, up 0.4 percent or 9 trillion won from a year earlier. The greater S...

South Korea's unification ministry on Monday urged North Korea to start the new year with a step for dialogue and cooperation, as Pyongyang is set to convene a key party meeting this week to discuss domestic and foreign policy issues. North Korea earlier announced the ruling Workers' Party will hold a plenary meeting of its central committee "in the last third of December" to "discuss and decide...

Ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung on Monday launched a new committee with former Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon in a display of internal unity ahead of the March presidential election. The Democratic Party presidential nominee has sought to add the former prime minister to his campaign in order to heal an internal rift that followed their bitter primary battle and rally the support o...

Korea’s national security can be mainly divided into the policy toward North Korea and toward the others. Since last week’s interview with the president of KINU (Korea Institute of National Unification) covered Korea’s policies toward North Korea, the interview this week is about Korea’s overall national security. Kim Ki-jung, the president of the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), ...

The Kia Tigers announced their signings of two new foreign players on Monday, adding a former major league outfielder and a career minor league pitcher to their roster. The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) club inked outfielder Socrates Brito to a one-year contract at $900,000. The 29-year-old from the Dominican Republic will get $500,000 in salary, $100,000 in signing bonus and up to $300,000 ...

South Korea will push to submit an official application to join a mega Asia-Pacific free trade agreement in April next year by speeding up the process of collecting public opinions and building social consensus, the country's top economic policymaker said Monday. The government earlier said that it had begun the process to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partne...

SM Entertainment, a leading K-pop agency, formed a new supergroup Monday with seven of its top female artists. GOT the beat consists of diva BoA; Taeyeon and Hyoyeon of Girls' Generation; Seulgi and Wendy of Red Velvet and Karina and Winter of aespa. It is the first group formed under SM's broader project titled "Girls On Top (GOT)" for debuting new female units with leading artists managed by ...

Samsung Heavy Industries Co., the world's second-biggest shipbuilder by orders, said Monday it has received a 240 billion won ($202 million) order to build a liquefied natural gas ship for a shipper in Latin America by 2024. The company did not provide the name of the shipper. With the latest order, Samsung Heavy has achieved $12.2 billion worth of orders this year, exceeding its annual order t...

Ahn Cheol-soo, the presidential candidate of the minor opposition People's Party, on Monday shrugged off a possible alliance with the ruling Democratic Party (DP) presidential nominee Lee Jae-myung, saying he is not interested in anyone's offer. Ahn dismissed the DP Chairman Song Young-gil's view that he can "integrate" with Lee. Song earlier said in a Yonhap News Agency interview that Ahn is es...