Taekwang Power Holdings, a unit of South Korean textile and shoemaker Taekwang, said Monday that it has received approval from the Vietnamese government to build a $2.3 billion power plant in the Southeast Asian country.Taekwang Power has been seeking to build the plant with total capacity of 1,200 megawatts in the northeastern Nam Dinh Province, with a slew of South Korean firms, including Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction and POSCO Engineering & Construction, participating in the project.

A high school teacher filed a lawsuit against the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, saying that he was fired due to groundless sexual harassment claims made against him. The court dismissed the case Sunday.Witnesses claimed that the plaintiff made numerous female students uncomfortable during his years of teaching, including smelling a student’s hair and saying he enjoyed the smell of it.  (Yonhap)He was also accused of touching another student’s toes under the table of a dessert cafe, as

South Korean stocks traded almost flat Monday morning, with top market cap Samsung Electronics and No. 2 SK hynix falling on profit-taking.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index gained 0.32 point, or 0.01 percent, to 2,392.11 as of 11:15 a.m.Market kingpin Samsung Electronics shed 0.38 percent, and SK hynix, a major chipmaker, dropped 2.08 percent.In contrast, Naver, the country's top Internet portal operator, gained 0.24 percent, and Hyundai Motor, the No. 1 automaker, rose 0.31 percen

South Korea will not undergo a sharp drop in consumption despite the ever-rising household debt, a private think tank said Monday, citing growth in property and financial asset value.Households where the head of the family was over 55 have witnessed a 94.51 percent rise in income and 78.32 percent increase in savings in 2015 compared with 2001, according to a report by the Korea Economic Research Institute. The value of their property and financial assets surged 157.35 percent and 98.3 percent,

Senior managers at big service sector firms earned 4.2 times more than rank-and-file workers last year, highlighting the widening wage gap in earnings that began with the 2008-09 global financial crisis, according to official data Monday. A service worker's average monthly wage rose to 1.67 million won ($1,460) last year from 1.61 million won in 2009, according to data by the Bank of Korea and the Ministry of Employment and Labor.  In comparison, a senior manager's average monthly wage stoo

South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor said Monday it took the top spot in J.D. Power's customer satisfaction survey in China this year despite declining sales in the wake of a diplomatic row between the two countries.In 2017, Hyundai Motor took the No. 1 position back in China after losing it to Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroen Automobile, a joint venture between Dongfeng Motor Corp and PSA Peugeot Citroen, last year in J.D. Power's Sales Satisfaction Index, the company said in a statement.  In this photo

Hanwha Galleria, a local duty-free operator, will remove its business from a local airport amid a sharp decrease in the number of Chinese tourists following a diplomatic row over the deployment of a US missile defense system here, industry sources said Monday.The duty-free operator has recently delivered its intention to the Korea Airports, the country's airport operator, to return its duty-free business license at Jeju Airport, which is valid until April 2019, and received written consent from

South Korea's electricity supply remained stable last month despite the temporary shutdown of eight old coal-fired power plants as part of the government's efforts to reduce the country's air pollution levels, industry sources said Monday.Starting June 1, the thermal power plants, including four in central Chungcheong Province, were closed for 30 days. The closed plants have a combined generation capacity of 2.8 gigawatts, taking up about 2.5 percent of the country's total capacity. (Yonhap)The

Samsung Heavy Industries, a major shipbuilder here, said Monday that it has clinched a $240 million deal to build two shuttle oil tankers.Under the deal with AET, an affiliate of Malaysian shipping firm MISC, Samsung Heavy will build the two vessels by January 2020, the company said in a regulatory filing.A shuttle tanker is a ship designed to transport oil from an offshore oil field to a storage tank, and is equipped with a variety of offloading equipment.With the latest deal, Samsung Heavy has

Multinational pharmaceutical companies have topped the list in winning approvals from South Korea's drug regulatory agency for clinical trials this year, data showed Monday.According to the data by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, four major global drug manufacturers have won a combined 42 clinical trials during the first half of 2017. (Yonhap)Gilead Sciences Korea, the local unit of Gilead Sciences, won the approval of 13 clinical trials, followed by Novatis Korea with 11, Roche Korea with

The number of South Korean business groups' affiliates under tight restrictions on mutual investment and loan guarantees rose slightly in June from a month earlier, the corporate watchdog said Monday.The Fair Trade Commission said 1,268 firms were on its monthly watch list as of end-June, up five from the previous month. They are owned by the country's 31 largest business groups, including Samsung Group and Hyundai Motor Group, with assets of 10 trillion won ($8.5 billion) or more.Ten groups, li

LG Electronics said Monday it released a new tablet PC with improved portability, which supports the long-term evolution network connectivity.The South Korean tech giant said the 290-gram G Pad IV 8.0 FHD LTE can be considered "as light as a can of soda," making the device especially suitable for women and teenagers. The company said the 8-inch display also makes it easier for users to carry the product in hand bags and pockets. A model poses with LG Electronics Inc.'s new tablet PC, the LG Pad

South Korean women employees are paid less than their male counterparts among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member economies, due to wage discrimination, data showed Monday.The proportion of female low-salaried workers who are paid less than two-thirds of the median wage stood at 37.6 percent in 2015, down from 37.8 percent the previous year, according to the statistics by the OECD. The figure is the highest among 16 OECD member countries that have proveided comparab

LG Electronics said Monday it has simplified titles among its workers to break the previous hierarchical structure and to induce employees to become more creative.The South Korean tech giant said it has streamlined the five-level ranking system to three in a bid to help workers better communicate with each other. Starting Monday, the workers were given one of three titles, namely professional, specialist and associate. Complicated ranking systems closely linked to deep-rooted hierarchical cultur

South Korean stocks opened slightly high Monday, as investors scooped up chemicals amid a rebound in oil prices.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index rose 3.17 points, or 0.13 percent, to 2,394.96 in the first 15 minutes of trading. Market kingpin Samsung Electronics remained unchanged, and SK hynix was 1.93 percent down.Hyundai Motor, the No. 1 automaker, surrendered 0.31 percent, while AmorePacific, the country's top cosmetics maker, rose 1.32 percent.LG Chem, the country's top

South Korean shipbuilders, led by Hyundai Heavy Industries, have clinched the most new shipbuilding orders in the first half of the year, with their combined tally more than doubling from a year earlier, industry data showed Monday.Hyundai Heavy and other local shipyards have bagged orders worth a combined 2.56 million compensated gross tons in the January-June period, accounting for 34 percent of the total orders placed around the globe, according to the data compiled by industry tracker Clarks

Global smartphone makers are expected to fiercely compete with each other to win over consumers in the second half by launching new flagship devices, industry watchers said Monday, with Samsung Electronics poised to release a new phablet to overcome its tainted brand image sparked by the suspended Galaxy Note 7 last year.Market observers said Samsung, along with Apple and LG Electronics, plan to release new smartphones in the coming months, with the companies focusing on showcasing nearly bezel-

“Anarchist from Colony,” the latest box office hit directed by Lee Joon-ik and starring Lee Je-hoon, is now screening with English subtitles in select theaters in Korea and will have limited screenings in the US.English subtitled screenings of the movie were released Friday at MegaBox’s Songdo location in Incheon. This photo provided by Megabox Plus M shows actor Lee Je-hoon (C) as Park Yeol in the new Korean historical film "Anarchist from Colony." (Yonhap)As “Anarchist from Colony” had a succe

The South Korean police on Friday nabbed a suspect behind a murder that occurred in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province.The victim, a woman in her 20s, was found in the veranda behind a church parking lot Thursday night. Local police revealed that the body had been hidden there for about three days.(Yonhap)The police said that the suspect was the victim’s boyfriend, 21, who she had been living with for the past two months.After murdering the woman on Monday night, the suspect relocated the body

GS Engineering & Construction Co. said Friday it has won a 1 trillion-won ($865 million) order to repair a refinery plant in the United Arab Emirates that suffered a fire by early 2019.UAE Takreer, which is wholly owned by Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., placed the order with GS E&C to restore burnt parts of its oil-processing plant in Ruwais, 250 kilometers west of UAE's capital city of Abu Dhabi, the company said in a statement. UAE Takreer's refinery plant built by GS E&C in Ruwais (Photo courtes