The South Korean government will roll out massive support programs for exporters this year, aiming to return the country’s export volume to pre-pandemic levels, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Wednesday. Exports, the main locomotive of Asia’s fourth largest economy, are projected to have fallen below $1 trillion for the first time in four years due to economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the annual plan from the Ministry of Trade, Industry an

Naver plans to raise as much as 700 billion won through bond sales to secure funds required to set up a new data center in South Korea and invest in foreign platform startups. The South Korean internet giant disclosed the plan, which would be the largest in its history, in a regulatory filing with the Financial Services Commission on Tuesday. The target amount is set initially at 400 billion won, with a possibility of rising to 700 billion won, it said. The bond issue will be Naver’s

Google’s revenue from app store fees in South Korea could increase by more than 150 billion won a year when the company’s billing policy changes take effect later this year, a local lawmaker said Tuesday. In September last year, Google announced that the company would enforce a 30 percent commission on all in-app purchases of digital content from its app store, starting in October, 2021. Google has so far charged fees on game content sales only. Rep. Park Sung-joong of the oppos

South Korean researchers have developed an artificial intelligence-based acoustic sensor that resembles the human cochlea, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology said Monday. The research team, led by KAIST professors Lee Keon-jae and Wang Hee-seung, said they used an ultrathin piezoelectric membrane to mimic the basilar membrane in the cochlea, which acts as an analyzer to translate frequency of sounds. Equipped with machine learning-based speaker recognition, the new acoust

S-Oil, South Korea’s No. 3 refiner, is expected to see an improvement in profits this year, continuing a recovery momentum from the final quarter of 2020, according to the industry sources Sunday. S-Oil said the company expects a recovery based on the increasing profitability of the company’s petrochemical products, including propylene oxide and polypropylene. S-Oil noted the company plans to increase production capacity for propylene oxide through which the company managed to off

South Korea’s top 1 percent of streamers earned an average of 671 million won in 2019, according to data released Sunday by the National Tax Service. 　 According to a report by Yang Kyung-sook of the ruling Democratic Party here, the top 1 percent of tax-registered streamers by income, or 27 individuals, made a total of 18.1 billion won, accounting for around 21 percent of the total income made by all local one-person media creators registered with the tax office. The number of one-perso

Nexon, South Korea’s largest game developer, has paid a record amount of cash in dividends to its parent company NXC after posting all-time high earnings last year, according to the Japanese electronic disclosure system Sunday. According to the Electronic Disclosure for Investors‘ NETwork, Nexon provided a dividend of 29.9 billion yen (320 billion won) to its parent company last year. In total, Nexon provided 61.4 billion yen of dividends through last year, up around 30 percent fr

South Korea’s two online giants -- Naver and Kakao -- had the best year ever in 2020, benefiting from the rise of e-commerce and the contactless trend. Yet, as the pain of those less fortunate grows, they may have to part with some of their profit if policymakers push ahead with an unprecedented profit-sharing plan they have vowed to introduce. Kakao, the company behind the country’s near-ubiquitous messaging app KakaoTalk, on Tuesday reported a whopping 120.5 percent on-year jum

The South Korean government has asked US tech giant Google to take preemptive measures to ensure stable services, while demanding the company notify local users in Korean language should there be service errors. Google will also operate a customer service space through which users can ask questions. South Korea’s ICT Ministry announced Monday its follow up measures regarding the global outage of Google’s services in December, during which users were unable to connect to Google pr

Kakao introduced its newly developed mobile-based remote work solution and digital wallet during the second roundtable meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Digital for SMEs global initiative, the company said Friday. Kakao was the only official partner company from Asia to join the two-day event held online to promote discussions on how to enable small and medium-sized enterprises to make the most of the ongoing digital shift. At the meeting, Kakao intr

South Korea‘s Drug Safety Ministry announced Friday it has approved Celltrion’s COVID-19 treatment candidate for conditional use. Conditional approval of Celltrion’s CT-P59, an anti-COVID-19 monoclonal antibody treatment candidate, has become the country’s first homegrown COVID-19 treatment. Celltrion’s CT-P59 will be administered only to COVID-19 patients at higher risk, including those over the age of 60 or with vascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases,

Sales of biosimilars developed by Samsung Bioepis in European countries reached 866 billion won ($795 million) last year, the South Korean drugmaker said Friday, citing an earnings report from US partner Biogen. Samsung Bioepis is a joint venture between Biogen and Samsung Group’s biopharmaceutical unit Biologics. Its biosimilar sales are shared by the two companies. According to Biogen’s earnings report, sales of Samsung Bioepis’ three major autoimmune biosimilars -- Bene

A South Korean research team funded by Samsung Electronics has developed a system that can be used to calculate the time that has elapsed since the onset of disease. The research, titled “Recording of elapsed time and temporal information about biological events using Cas9,” has been published in Cell, an international journal publishing research papers regarding life sciences. It is the first time for research funded by Samsung Future Technology Development Project to be publish

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic crippled markets worldwide last year, South Korea’s three major mobile carriers have seen improved results from their investments in media and platform services, along with expanded 5G network businesses. According to the latest report from market research firm FnGuide, the combined revenue of South Korea’s three major mobile carriers in 2020 are expected to reach 55.7 trillion won, up 2.4 percent on-year. The combined operating profit of the three mob

Cyworld, South Korea’s first-generation social media platform from the early 2000s, will restart its service next month, according to local industry sources on Tuesday. Cyworld has been recently acquired by a consortium of five local entertainment firms. Cyworld Z, an entity established by the five to take over Cyworld, said that the company plans to bring back the Cyworld service in March after two weeks of beta testing. It plans to introduce a mobile version of the social network dur

Samsung Electronics has regained a spot on the Fortune list of the world’s 50 most admired companies, according to the survey published by the US economic magazine on Monday. The tech behemoth this year ranked 49th, becoming the only South Korean company to make the top 50 this year. Samsung Electronics this year received 7.56 points, slightly up from 7.50 a year earlier. Samsung Electronics marked top scores in five evaluation categories, including innovation, global competitiveness

Seoul boasts the world’s fastest 5G network services, according to a broadband speed test conducted with iPhone 12 devices. According to Ookla’s speed test data published last month, Seoul ranked first with a median download speed of 472.28 megabits per second, followed by Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia capital Riyadh, Sydney and Helsinki. Seoul had the fastest upload speed, reaching 49.09 megabits per second, the data also showed. Ookla’s report noted that

Naver gave out hefty stock bonuses to its 98 executives worth a combined 3.1 billion won ($2.78 million), the company said Tuesday, after the tech giant raked in record-high profits last year. CEO Han Seong-sook received 1,000 treasury stocks of the firm, amounting to 355 million won based on Thursday’s closing price of 355,000 won apiece. Chief Operating Officer Choi In-hyuk, Chief Communications Officer Chae Sun-joo and Chief Financial Officer Park Sang-jin received 700 shares each,

Naver is more than just a South Korean version of Google. For many Koreans, it is the go-to site for searching, news, blogging, cloud services, shopping, fintech and many other things -- including killing time with cartoons. And the behemoth isn’t stopping there. Naver is aggressively investing in global platforms that cater to the social media generation throughout the world. For now, its main focus appears to be cartoons and K-pop.    Webtoons Web-based cartoons, or web

SK Telecom said Monday it would begin sales of Facebook’s latest virtual reality device, the Oculus Quest 2, in South Korea, starting Tuesday. The Oculus Quest 2 will go on sale from 414,000 won ($370) at SK Telecom’s offline and online stores. The device is equipped with Qualcomm Technologies’ XR2 chipset and supports almost-4K resolution display. It also allows users to toggle between 72 hertz, 80 hertz and 90 hertz refresh rate modes. The standalone virtual reality head