Baesangmyun Brewery Co. has recently started exporting wine made with Korean blackberries ― called bokbunja ― to China. The company said Tuesday it clinched a contract worth 200 million won ($174,000) last month with Qingdao Hongbo Import & Export Co., a trading firm, to supply 60,000 bottles of the wine throughout this year. “The deal signifies the upbeat outlook for the Korean alcoholic bever...

GS Engineering & Construction Corp. aims to more than triple its sales and operating profit and secure 35 trillion won ($30.4 billion) in overseas orders by 2020 as part of its long-term roadmap to become a global player. Korea’s third-largest builder on Monday unveiled ambitious goals of making 27 trillion won in sales and 2 trillion won in operating profit by 2020, both up more than 330 percen...

Rising household debt and trouble-laden savings banks pose a threat to Korea’s financial sector, which has long been protected and pampered by government-led bailouts and injections of public funds, analysts said Tuesday. The country’s banks and other financial companies confront a toxic mix of slower global growth and the protracted sovereign debt crisis in Europe, a precarious situation that c...

South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves declined for a second consecutive month in December as a weaker euro and a softer pound reduced the conversion value of non-dollar assets, the central bank said Tuesday. The country’s foreign reserves reached $306.4 billion last month, down $2.23 billion from the previous month, according to the Bank of Korea. The December reading marked the second straigh...

With Europeans and Asians buying fewer $65,000 diamond necklaces and $10,000 amethyst earrings, Tiffany & Co. may be in for a less-than-glittering 2012. No U.S. luxury merchant is more exposed internationally. The world’s second largest jeweler generates almost half its sales outside of the Americas, up from 38 percent in 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Tiffany’s foreign sales are...

Korea’s presidents may believe it grossly unfair that people tend to assess their performances by the number of scandals involving their families and close associates instead of their positive achievements in domestic and external affairs. President Lee Myung-bak’s approval rating now hovers around the 30 percent mark, the average figure of his predecessors in the final year of their five-year t...

It was in 2007 that a newspaper picture showed a dozen young women in a Southeast Asian country standing in line before a couple men from Korea in what was described as a matchmaking session. By the time the picture was published here, the international marriage brokerage that resembles human trafficking had created anti-Korean sentiment in the countries from which many brides came to Korea. It ...

LONDON (AFP) ― British artist David Hockney has responded to his appointment to the Order of Merit with typical humor, saying he was glad his controversial campaign for smokers’ rights had not worked against him. Hockney, who came to prominence during the British pop art movement in the 1960s, was named as a member of the exclusive order on Sunday by Queen Elizabeth II. Accepting the royal hono...

HONG KONG (AFP) ― Squatting at a makeshift shrine with joss sticks burning beside her, Granny Leung starts bashing a manlike paper cut-out with a pair of sandals. “I beat you little people, I’m sending you away!” chants the 76-year-old woman, one of the last practitioners in Hong Kong of the ancient Chinese ritual of “da siu yan,” or “beating the petty little people.” Granny Leung performs her ...