AU$1 billion defense deal On the same day, Australia signed a defense contract worth 1 billion Australian dollars ($720 million) with South Korea’s Hanwha Defense for supplying 30 self-propelled howitzers and 15 armored ammunition resupply vehicles. The Australian government said it would also procure “weapon-locating radars that help find enemy artillery” from Hanwha Defense. More importantly...

SK Group, South Korea's No. 3 conglomerate, said Monday it signed a deal with the Vietnamese government to boost cooperation in eco-friendly businesses, such as areas related to carbon emission cuts, hydrogen and digital technologies. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won signed the memorandum of understanding during a meeting with top Vietnamese government officials in Seoul, including Deputy Prime Mi...

Outages in the government's digital vaccine authentication system have been reported in large numbers Monday, causing inconveniences around lunch time on the first day of the nation's vaccine pass enforcement. Reports of inability to access COOV, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency's smartphone application which offers vaccine certifications in QR codes, began appearing in various on...

South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong stressed the partnership with Washington, but remained apart on key sticking points with Tokyo, in a brief meeting with his US and Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of the Group of Seven session in the UK. Chung joined the in-person gathering of G-7 foreign and development ministers meeting in Liverpool, England, over the weekend, the Foreign ...

South Korea's ruling bloc is pushing to pass a bill that would require labor representatives on corporate boards, raising backlash for potentially undermining the rights of shareholders and decreasing the efficiency of state-run companies. The National Assembly is holding a provisional session in December, with lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea hoping to pass a proposed revision ...

Shares of robotics tech firms surged Monday following news reports that Samsung Electronics is setting up a new team solely dedicated to the robotics business, one of the frequently-cited new growth engines for the Korean tech giant. Yujin Robot, one of the first-generation robotics companies here with more than 30 years of history, saw a 30 percent jump in its stock price and was trading at 4,1...

A fifth of people aged 15 to 29 in South Korea were not in employment, education or training (NEET), a report has shown, which would mark the third-highest level among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The estimated number of NEET youth in South Korea is nearly 1.59 million, according to a report by Chung Jae-hyun, head of the youth policy research and devel...

Samsung Electronics said Monday its Bespoke water purifier, whose trade name is RWPaxy1bcde(z), has been certified by NSF International, a US-based product testing and certification organization, for removing microplastics from water – an industry first globally. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic, less than 5 micrometers in length, that are extremely difficult to detect. They are known to...

President Moon Jae-in said during a state visit to Australia Monday that the Korean government is not considering a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics in a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. When a reporter asked whether Moon’s visit to Australia could give China a bad signal while Australia is in conflict with China and has announced a d...

Police will consider disclosing the identities of not only distributors of sexually exploitative materials but also their buyers as part of efforts to clamp down on digital sex crimes, officials said Monday. The National Police Agency said it began discussing the matter in an interagency meeting with the government's policy coordination office, the interior ministry, the Korea Communications Sta...

The death of Roh Tae-woo, who was president from 1988 to 1993, in October put a spotlight on his historical achievements. His foreign policies, such as hosting the Seoul Olympics, joining the UN, and promoting the Northern Policy, are seen as major diplomatic moments in modern Korean history. Behind the scenes of it all was the Presidential Secretary Kim Chong-whi. Kim served as the senior presi...

South Korea needs to "steadily adjust" high levels of leverage maintained to prop up the pandemic-hit economy as excessive indebtedness could result in financial instability and reduce future policy room, a central bank report showed Monday. Rising household debt, in particular, has been cited as a major economic risk factor and the government has been tightening rules on lending amid worries th...

The number of mid-sized firms in South Korea went up in 2020 from a year earlier, but their sales dipped due to the coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Monday. Asia's fourth-largest economy had 5,526 mid-sized companies as of the end of last year, up 519 from a year earlier, according to the data from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Mid-sized firms here refer to those which...

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. (DSME) said Monday that it has secured a technology to prevent cracks in the welded parts of submarines. DSME has developed the technology after two years of research and development since 2019 in cooperation with steelmaker POSCO and KR, a South Korean ship quality assurance and risk management company, the shipbuilder said. The technology is essent...