Amore Pacific Corp., the nation’s largest beauty company, said Monday that it has logged 1.3 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in sales in the first half of the year, a 16 percent increase from a year earlier. During the same period, operating profits amounted to 241.5 billion won, up 4 percent, while net profits increased 3.9 percent to 184.4 billion won, the company said. “The strong performance in...

Local firms’ bold investment in television production and upbeat global demand turned Korea into the world’s second-largest maker of light-emitting diodes last year, the government said Tuesday. Combined sales of Korean LED manufacturers more than doubled to 6.9 trillion won ($6.35 billion) last year worldwide from 3.1 trillion won in 2009 and more than tripled from 2.2 trillion won in 2007, acc...

Korean singles believe ideal annual income of potential partners should be at least $33,000, a poll showed on Wednesday. The research showed that while males wished for partners with annual salary of at least $30,055, females answered that the bottom line should be $37,110. Job Korea, a local online recruitment website, conducted the study with some 545 singles concerning the preferable financi...

Amid rising criticism over an oligopoly in the market, Korea’s large businesses are to keep their hands off affiliates in charge of sourcing spare parts, stationery and repair services for office equipment. SK Group became the latest conglomerate on Sunday to step back from its lucrative procurement service unit, MRO Korea, by transforming it into the country’s largest social enterprise. The co...

SK Communications, which runs Nate and Cyworld, said Monday it will start a campaign asking its users to change their passwords to prevent a second possible security breach. Those who have not changed their passwords since the first security breach, which occurred in late July, must make the change to use the company’s web search engine Nate or social networking site Cyworld, according to its of...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The two-week plunge in stock prices is signaling economic anxiety, but it’s also compounding the problem: Lower stock prices are shrinking Americans’ wealth, rattling their confidence and making them less inclined to spend. And employers may become even slower to hire. The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 513 points, or 4 percent, Thursday on fears about the U.S. econom...