SK Holdings, the parent company of South Korea’s third-largest conglomerate SK Group, is moving to expand the scope of its global mobility business as it explores new potential partnerships and areas for cooperation with leading future mobility startups worldwide.SK Holdings said Sunday that it hosted a workshop with Southeast Asia’s top ride-hailing giant Grab, US-based car-sharing service leader Turo and SoCar, Korea’s leading car-sharing firm, to discuss ways to forge synergies and partner fo

South Korea’s largest steelmaker Posco announced Saturday that it has named Choi Jeong-woo, CEO of Posco Chemtech, as its new chairman.　The company’s board of directors voted to nominate Choi for the chairman post at next month’s extraordinary shareholder’s meeting, during a meeting held Saturday, according to Posco.As a result, Choi is set to assume his new post after a special shareholder meeting and board approval on July 27. 　The Posco Chemtech CEO had been one of five final candidates nomin

Kim Jong-pil, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 92, was a seemingly ever-present figure in Korean politics, whose influence has been felt since the early 1960s. Kim was a two-time former Prime Minister, the founder of the country’s spy agency and widely-known as the “perennial No. 2 man” in modern Korean politics. He was 92. Kim was transferred from his home to Soonchunhyang University Hospital in Seoul and was declared dead upon arrival at 8:15 a.m., according to the hospital. He is bel

South Korea’s top carpooling startup Poolus has laid off around 70 percent of its employees as part of business restructuring initiated by growing financial difficulties and regulatory hurdles that have weighed down on the app’s growth.　　Poolus confirmed Thursday that its CEO Kim Tae-ho had resigned as of June 7 during a board meeting. The startup said it has been seeing “stagnant earnings and operational difficulties due to regulatory issues” and will “re-examine the viability of its business a

South Korean contract drug manufacturer Samsung BioLogics said Thursday that it has obtained its first-ever manufacturing approval from Canada’s drug regulators for a biologic product produced at its first plant in Songdo, Incheon.With the addition, the company has now earned 14 manufacturing approvals from the world’s top drug regulators -- the US Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency, Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency and now Health Canada.Eleven of the a

South Korea was the world’s third-largest market for online video games and the fourth-largest for mobile games last year, according to data provided by market research firm Euromonitor International on Wednesday.Korea’s online video game market was valued at $1.69 billion in 2017, marking an on-year growth of 23.2 percent. The country’s mobile game market was valued at $2.34 billion in the same year, up 36 percent from the previous year.China ($11.9 billion) and the US ($2.24 billion) were the

KAIST, South Korea’s leading science and technology research university, will host a forum in Seoul on Thursday to discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence technology development as well as policymaking around the world. Titled “Taming Artificial Intelligence: Engineering, Ethics and Policy,” the forum will invite some of the world’s leading AI researchers, including those who recently made headlines for announcing a boycott of KAIST over its alleged contribution to developing autonomous “k

DISCUSSING GAME EXPORTS -- Business meetings are held at the “2018 ITS GAME” game industry trade show, which kicked off at Coex in Seoul on Tuesday. In its ninth edition, the event has the participation of 110 game publishers and buyers from 14 countries including the US and China. Yonhap

The World Health Organization has recognized game addiction as a mental disorder in its latest version of the revised 11th International Classification of Diseases released Monday, drawing backlash from the gaming industry and medical professionals worldwide, including Korea’s.Though technically a draft, the ICD-11 in its present state is the final copy that will be considered for official endorsement upon discussion by the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, in May 2019.The I

South Koreans appear to be spending more time on Instagram and less on Facebook compared to a year ago, according to new data tracking the amount of time locals spend on social networking sites, released Tuesday.Data from local app analytics firm WiseApp showed that Koreans spent 1.5 billion minutes on Instagram in May this year, marking a 36 percent increase from 1.1 billion minutes recorded in May 2017.Instagram’s jump in popularity was led mainly by women in their 20s and 30s, with those in t

South Korea’s Daewoong Pharmaceutical said Monday that it has restructured its research and development units to lend a boost to its new drug development efforts.The Korean pharma company said that its R&D workforce will now work in different project-oriented groups called “extreme teams” designed to achieve specific goals of a particular project. Each team will focus on a different project, and be disbanded once the project ends.As a result, Daewoong’s R&D workforce will be divided into a new d

South Korean fintech startup Viva Republic, the maker of money transfer app Toss, said Monday that it has newly raised $40 million in funding from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and venture investor Sequoia China. The deal marks the first investment in a Korean startup by GIG and Sequoia China. It also brings Viva Republica’s total investment raised to $116 million, the company said. Launched in 2015, Toss is best known as a peer-to-peer money transfer app that allows users to wire money

In South Korea, Naver dominates the internet technology space. Here, the Naver portal website serves as a mainstream hub for just about every web-based activity, ranging from searches and shopping to blogs, news and maps.　However, Naver is outpaced by its foreign rival Google in one key area — videos. Google-owned YouTube is currently Korea’s longest-used app and the primary tool used to share and watch online videos, according to Seoul-based app analytics firm WiseApp. 　With YouTube’s presence

Samsung Electronics has reportedly been ordered to pay $400 million to the licensing arm of South Korea’s top science and research university KAIST over infringing a patent related to key semiconductor technology.　A US federal jury in Texas ruled that the Korean tech giant infringed KAIST’s patent related FinFet -- a key transistor technology used to produce processors for mobile phones -- and should pay a fine, according to a Bloomberg report Saturday.Chipmakers Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries wer

Kakao, the operator of South Korea’s dominant mobile messenger KakaoTalk, said Thursday that it has acquired a 51 percent stake in Kiwi Plus, a local kids’ smartwatch and smartphone manufacturer.　The Korean mobile technology giant plans to invest around 10 billion won ($9.23 million) in making the acquisition, aimed at strengthening Kakao’s portfolio of hardware and internet of things technologies. Kakao Kid's Smartphone (Kiwi Plus)Founded in 2013, Kiwi Plus is a hardware manufacturer best-known

South Korea’s financial regulators are planning to look into the financial statements of contract drug manufacturer Samsung BioLogics prior to 2015, the fiscal year at which the company posted a controversial 1.9 trillion won ($1.77 billion) in net profit by switching its accounting standards.   　It signals a shift in the investigative direction of the Securities and Futures Commission, the auditing unit of the Financial Services Commission, which appears to be seeking a midway solution that can

South Koreans are big on food delivery. With just a phone call, food like fried chicken and jjajangmyeon, or Chinese black bean noodles, can be brought to one’s doorstep. 　While much of this dynamic still stands, Korea’s food delivery market is quickly changing and expanding in scope, mainly riding on demographic shifts and going mobile.　Food deliveries are becoming more popular than ever, fueled by single-person households who prefer food deliveries to eating out alone. Smartphones have also st

Social media giant Twitter has launched a special emoji to mark the historic US-North Korea summit taking place in Singapore, on projections of an upturn in social media traffic.　Ahead of the historic meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Twitter encouraged users following the event to use a series of hashtags to activate a new special emoji.“US President @realdonaldtrump will meet North Korea Chairman Kim Jong-un on 12 June in Singapore,” said a tweet fr

A South Korean food technology startup has launched a new restaurant guide introducing the top-rated restaurants in North Korea to wish for peace and the reunification of the Korean Peninsula, as the historic US-North Korea Summit was held in Singapore on Tuesday. 　SikSin, Korea’s leading restaurant recommendation and rating app, said it has launched the world’s first-ever “North Korea’s best restaurant guide” on its mobile app and website.The SikSin platform now has a new “North Korea category”

Naver, the operator of South Korea’s most widely used portal website, will disallow users from posting the same comment multiple times on a news article, as part of continued efforts to revamp its news display system and prevent macro automation software. 　The move is the latest in Naver’s series of responses to an opinion rigging scandal in which a power blogger named “Druking” and politicians used a computer program to artificially ramp up the number of clicks on the “agree” button for specifi