Hyundai Motor Group on Wednesday broke ground on a 10 gigawatt-hour battery cell production plant in Indonesia in cooperation with LG Energy Solution, joining the global race to secure battery cells for the future. The joint factory, set for completion in the first half of 2023, will be built on a 300,000-meter site in Karawang, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. The two South Korean firms have formed a $1.1 billion joint venture for the project, with each owning a 50 percent stake. The

Everything that goes down the drain in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, a city of 1.25 million people, ends up in the Suwon Environment Affairs Agency. Every day, as much as 520,000 cubic meters of wastewater is filtered and purified at two water treatment facilities there -- one under and one above the ground -- and is then discharged into the river that leads to South Korea’s west coast. Earlier this month, The Korea Herald visited the underground facility whose operation is commissioned to

South Korea’s new Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo is a veteran negotiator who sat at the bargaining table for many of the free trade deals South Korea has inked over the past two decades, including the one with the European Union. Before assuming his current position on Aug. 9, the 51-year-old bureaucrat served as presidential secretary for the New Southern and New Northern policies -- President Moon Jae-in’s signature foreign policy initiatives to expand the nation’s economic and

When Yeo Han-koo, South Korea’s newly minted trade minister, first joined the officialdom in the early 1990s as a trade relations official, his country was just struggling to catch up with an emerging international trade order that later gave birth to the World Trade Organization. Three decades and 17 free trade deals later, South Korea stands as a shining example of free trade-driven prosperity, ranking among the world’s top 10 exporters. The path ahead, however, looks fraught w

SK Materials and Group14 Technologies will jointly establish an 850 billion won ($725.7 million) silicon anode plant in Sangju, North Gyeongsang Province, to gain foothold in the next-generation electric vehicle battery market, SK Materials said Tuesday. The project is to be led by a joint venture set up earlier by the two in a 75:25 ratio, tentatively named SK Materials Group14. The first factory is to break ground in October and kick off commercial operation starting next year. Including f

GS Caltex said Tuesday that it has deployed robots to maintenance tasks that entail risks of nitrogen asphyxiation, accelerating its digital transformation drive. According to the South Korean total energy company, its robot has successfully conducted a maintenance operation at the firm’s petrochemicals facility filled with nitrogen. The inert gas reduces fire risks during operation, but puts workers at risk of suffocation. Of 65 cases of workplace nitrogen asphyxiation cases in the la

LG Chem said Tuesday it will form a joint venture with Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest corn processors, to produce 75,000 tons of corn-based bioplastic per year starting in 2025. According to an agreement signed Monday between South Korea’s leading chemical firm and the Chicago-based agriculture company, a joint venture will be launched in early 2022 in the US to produce corn-based lactic acid and poly lactic acid, a biodegradable plastic used for food packaging,

Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Hyun-joon called for an aggressive, preemptive approach to increase its business foothold in the US during his recent visit there, the group said Monday. “The US holds the key to new market dynamics in the post-pandemic era,” the chief was quoted as saying by Hyosung officials in Seoul. “With thorough localization and attention to the customers’ needs, we must increase our market presence here.” Seoul officials linked the chairman&rsq

This is the first installment in a series of interviews with executives of Korean companies with space ambitions. -- Ed.  In 2013, South Korea celebrated the launch of its first rocket -- the “Naro” Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1 -- from its own soil. The country’s first spaceflight success was, however, an effort that largely relied on Russian experts. Eight years later and amid an intensifying space race among superpowers, the country will attempt to launch a tru

South Koreans may face higher electricity bills later this year, as the government is mulling a response to compensate for rising fuel prices. According to industry sources Sunday, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy will decide on Sept. 23 whether to raise electricity rates for the fourth quarter. A price hike seems inevitable, as the ministry and state-run utility Korea Electric Power Corp. already froze power bills twice in the second and third quarters in reflection of ongoing C

South Korea’s leading chemical firm LG Chem has joined hands with the nation’s e-commerce giant Coupang to recycle 3,000 metric tons of plastic packaging waste and to offer a door-to-door plastic-waste retrieval system. At Coupang’s headquarters in Jamsil, southeastern Seoul, LG Chem Executive Vice President Hur Sung-woo and Coupang Vice President Ryan Brown signed an agreement to collect and recycle 3,000 tons of stretch wrap being thrown away at Coupang fulfillment centers e

Hanwha Aerospace became the first South Korean space company to win government approval to utilize resources in space, such as on the moon and Mars, the company said Thursday. According to the defense business unit of Hanwha Group, the firm signed an in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU, agreement with six government-funded research bodies. ISRU refers to using local materials in space and producing necessary items required for space exploration on site, such as water, oxygen, solar cells

Leaders of major South Korean conglomerates including Hyundai Motor and SK officially launched the Korea H2 Business Summit on Wednesday to coordinate their efforts in bringing forth a hydrogen society. A local equivalent of the global CEO-led initiative Hydrogen Council, the coalition launched with 15 founding members, holding its inaugural meeting at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Euisun, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Posco Group Chairman Choi Je

Hyundai Motor Group on Tuesday unveiled a new hydrogen vision that includes plans to make hydrogen vehicles as cheap as electric vehicles within 10 years. During “Hydrogen Wave,” the automaker’s first global hydrogen event, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Euisun laid out his 20-year vision for hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen mobility. “Hyundai Motor envisions a future society where hydrogen energy is available for everyone, everything and everywhere. I have no d

Korea Aerospace Industries said Tuesday it had acquired a 20 percent stake in Meissa, a South Korean satellite footage analysis firm, to make a foray into the global space services market estimated to be valued at 300 trillion won ($255.4 billion). Together with Meissa, which developed the nation’s first “reconstruction engine” that can convert a 2D footage into 3D, KAI aims to provide advanced satellite footage analysis services using artificial intelligence and big data inst

Amid growing gamer fatigue over extreme pay-to-win games, a South Korean developer has come up with a new mobile game that offers just the opposite: Users can make money simply by enjoying the game. Wemade’s Mir 4 is a 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game that carries on the previous success of the firm’s The Legend of Mir 2, which recorded 500 million global users. After its global launch in some 170 countries on Aug. 26, it ranked as the fourth-most-played MMORPG on

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum visited Samsung Biologics’ headquarters in Incheon on Friday but remained silent on how many doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine the company would make available for use in South Korea. During his visit Kim checked Samsung Biologics’ facility, where hundreds of millions of doses of the Moderna vaccine will be manufactured starting this month. Despite being produced here, the vaccine is destined for overseas markets. But as Moderna struggles to fulfi

South Korea will take a new approach to trade on five core sectors in a bid to maximize its national interests, the country’s trade minister said Thursday. Presiding over his first trade committee meeting at the government complex in Sejong, newly appointed chief negotiator Yeo Han-koo called for a differentiated, creative and vigilant trade strategy on supply chain, vaccine, carbon neutrality and climate change, technology-based trade and digital commerce. “Korea will take ini

LG Chem said Thursday it will establish South Korea’s first hydrogen-treated vegetable oil factory to bolster its green product portfolio. The HVO factory will be built at the Daesan petrochemicals complex in South Chungcheong Province by 2024, according to the nation’s leading chemical firm. LG Chem will first form a joint venture with Dansuk Industrial, a local chemicals company, to build the factory together. HVO is a diesel substitute made from vegetable oil or waste cookin