SK Telecom Co., the country’s top mobile operator, on Tuesday reported a two-fold growth in its fourth-quarter profit from a year earlier due to a decrease in marketing costs. Net profit came to 519.1 billion won ($477.5 million) in the October-December period, compared with a profit of 195.5 billion won a year earlier, SK Telecom said in a regulatory filing. Revenue rose 6 percent on-year to 4...

South Korea ranked the second-most innovative country in the world, moving up one notch from last year’s ranking, data showed on Tuesday. According to data complied by financial news and data provider Bloomberg, Korea ranked No. 2 behind the United States, which topped the list by climbing six notches from last year. The research indicated progress in Korea’s innovation-related sector as it ros...

South Korea's tax agency has launched an investigation into the nation's top Internet portal operator NHN Corp for the first time since 2007, a company official said Monday. The official said the probe is a regular tax investigation that occurs every four or five years but NHN's first tax probe in 2007 forced the company to pay 1.48 billion won (US$1.3 million) in additional taxes. The 2007 tax...

Apple Inc. passed Samsung Electronics Co. to become the top mobile phone maker in the U.S. for the first time, scoring a victory in the companies’ battle for global dominance of the mobile-device market. Apple sold 17.7 million mobile phones in the U.S. during the fourth quarter, a 38 percent jump from a year earlier, research firm Strategy Analytics said Friday in a statement. That gave it 34 p...

Facility investment by businesses in South Korea will likely contract for three consecutive years from 2013 as companies remain reluctant to spend in the face of toughened and cloudy market conditions, a survey showed Sunday. Corporate investment in facilities is expected to decline 1.4 percent on-year to a combined 127.9 trillion won ($116.5 billion) this year, according to the survey by the Ko...

South Korea’s wage and income account deficit hit a record high in 2012 as local companies paid more for foreign workers here than income brought in by Korean laborers working overseas, data showed Sunday. According to the data by the Bank of Korea, income earned by foreign workers in Korea came to about $1.15 billion last year, down 2.8 percent from a year earlier. Income earned by Korean worke...

LG Electronics released new high-performance earphones dubbed “Quad Beat 2” which is expected to be included in the company’s next flagship smartphone “Optimus G Pro” package. “Quad Beat 2” is a follow-up model to “Quad Beat,” which has enjoyed popularity with Korean smartphone users as its performance surpassed expectations for standard headphones provided as a part of cellphone package. The m...

South Korea-based tech behemoth Samsung Electronics Co. will likely see its share of the world smartphone market far outpace that of iPhone maker Apple Inc. this year with new Galaxy devices set to hit the market, data showed Wednesday. Samsung is expected to ship 320.4 million units of smartphones worldwide in 2013, compared with an estimated 159 million units of the iPhone shipped by Apple, ac...

LG Electronics will roll out a new flagship smartphone dubbed “Optimus G Pro” in Korea by March, according to its chief financial officer Jeong Do-hyun on Wednesday. Following its quarterly earnings conference at its headquarters in Yeouido, Jeong said that the new 5.5-inch flagship smartphone will be released in the local market by the first quarter and then to the overseas market in the second...