South Korean snack maker Orion said Monday that the cumulative overseas sales of its signature chocolate-covered biscuit brand “Choco Pie” has surpassed 4 trillion won ($3.5 billion) as of July.　Boosted by its high popularity in China, Choco Pie’s global sales reached more than 200 billion won during the first half of this year, raising its cumulative overseas sales to 4.15 trillion won, Orion said.Orion’s flagship chocolate biscuit, first released in Korea in 1974, initially ventured abroad wit

South Korean cosmetics maker CLIO has secured $50 million in investment from the world’s largest luxury brand group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, boosting plans to expand overseas.LVMH-owned private equity fund L Capital Asia and CLIO signed an agreement on the investment and its terms during a ceremony in Singapore on July 22, the Korean cosmetics firm said Monday.Under the agreement, CLIO will complete its initial public offering by the end of this year and issue redeemable convertible pre

South Korean retailers are capitalizing on the explosive popularity of Nintendo’s augmented-reality mobile game “Pokemon Go” with new products and services targeting local Pokemon game enthusiasts and fans.　From a sudden rise in consumer spending at select Pokemon-appearing cities in Korea to the launch of Pokemon-inspired hotels, tour packages and goods, the smash-hit game appears to be leaving a notable imprint on the local retail sector.Pikachu is surrounded by children during a Pokemon festi

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Group is looking to make its mark in a new, promising field — biopharmaceuticals. At the heart of the push are the tech conglomerate's two young units — Samsung BioLogics and Samsung Bioepis.The former, founded in 2011, is a contract manufacturer of biologic drugs developed by pharmaceutical companies around the world while the latter, established in 2012, focuses on developing biosimilars — near-replicas of complex biologic drugs that have lost patent prot

South Korea’s leading network operator SK Telecom vowed to become an uncontested leader in the local mobile navigation business by making its flagship car navigation app T-map free for everyone starting from Tuesday.By freeing up T-map -- which non-SKT subscribers previously had to pay 4,000 won ($3.50) per month to use -- SKT is looking enhance the app’s competitiveness by securing more users. A model holds up a smartphone with SKT's flagship mobile navigation T-map in operation. From Tuesday,

Encouraged by the explosive popularity of Nintendo’s augmented-reality mobile game “Pokemon Go,” a South Korean tech start-up plans to introduce a similar game based on the country’s iconic animation “Pororo the Little Penguin.”SocialNetwork Co., a local start-up which specializes in augmented-reality technology, said Monday that it has begun developing “Pororo Go” in conjunction with the animation’s producer Iconix Entertainment.Pororo the Little Penguin” (Iconix Entertainment)“While ‘Pokemon G

Ahead of the opening of Shake Shack's first outlet in South Korea this Friday, its Korean licensee SPC Group vowed to make the brand available locally at the same quality and pricing scheme it boasts abroad. Shake Shack and SPC Group on Tuesday shared their collective vision and agenda for the burger brand’s business in Korea during a press conference at Shake Shack’s first store near Gangnam Station in southern Seoul.Shake Shack’s first outlet in Seoul near Gangnam Station (SPC Group)“In launch

Samsung Bioepis, the biopharma development unit of South Korean tech giant Samsung Group, said Monday it is seeking regulatory approval to sell its biosimilar drug referencing AbbVie’s top-selling rheumatoid drug Humira (adalimumab) in Europe.　The Samsung unit said the European Medicines Agency has accepted for review the company’s marketing authorization application for its Humira biosimilar, SB5, drawing a step closer to commercializing the drug in the region.A Samsung Bioepis employee (Samsun

CHUNCHEON, Gangwon Province -- At the foot of Mount Gubong in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province stands an oddly-shaped building guarded with heavy security -- Naver’s Data Center Gak.　It is where South Korea’s leading search engine and web portal Naver operates thousands of servers that store and manage its expansive data from services including emails, online blogs, cloud services and search queries.Naver’s Data Center Gak in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province (Naver)To symbolize the spirit of the data cent

CHUNCHEON, Gangwon Province — After mobile messenger app Line Corp.’s high-profile stock market debut in the U.S. and Japan, the company and its parent Naver face a hefty task — staying competitive in the global mobile messenger and Internet market dominated by U.S. and Chinese Internet giants, such as Facebook, Google and Tencent.　Japan-based Line Corp. owned by South Korean Internet giant Naver, went public on the New York Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange on Thursday and Friday after ra

South Koreans have recently been in a frenzy over characters created by two rival mobile messenger apps -- whether it is Line’s blank-faced bear named Brown or Kakao’s Muzi, who looks like a rabbit but is actually a radish in a costume.　Eyeing new market potential, Line Corp. and Kakao Corp. have brought their signature characters -- initially introduced as virtual stickers used on the messengers apps -- into the physical world where they have been reborn as character merchandise. Though Line, a

Nintendo’s augmented-reality smartphone game “Pokemon Go” has been taking the world by storm, but many anxious Pokemon fans in South Korea have been left wondering: When will the game officially launch here?“Pokemon Go,” released in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand last week, is a GPS-based mobile game that involves users running through real-life city streets, parks and other locations to capture virtual monsters, such as the all-famous character Pikachu, via their smartphones.It uses a tech

Two men (left) play Pokemon Go on their smartphones outside of Nintendo’s flagship store in New York City on Monday. AFP-Yonhap

Last Friday, when South Korea and the U.S. announced plans to deploy here an advanced U.S. missile defense system, shares of South Korea’s leading cosmetics maker AmorePacific tumbled. The stocks fell more than 4 percent, losing more than 1 trillion won in value just one day, as investors feared China, which had long been strongly opposing the system’s deployment in the Korean Peninsula, might pursue economic retaliation against South Korea. Cosmetics shops inside the main Shinsegae Department S

FROM GREAT INDUSTRY TO GHOST TOWN — Two construction cranes stand at a closed shipyard formerly owned by South Korean shipbuilder Sungdong Heavy Industries in Masan, South Gyeongsang Province, Sunday. In light of the prolonged downturn of the local shipbuilding sector, Sungdong’s 700-ton “Goliath Crane” will soon be purchased by a shipbuilding company in Romania, while the shipyard itself was sold off to 20 different small and mid-sized companies in July 2015. (Yonhap)

South Korean mobile phone-maker Pantech’s new mid-tier smartphone Sky IM-100 is selling quickly in the Korean market, with some 30,000 units sold since the model’s launch two weeks ago.　　About 7,000 units of the Sky IM-100 were preordered in June while daily sales since the model hit the market on June 30 have averaged 2,000 units, according to SK Telecom and KT, the two mobile service providers that are selling Pantech’s new budget smartphone here.Pantech’s Sky IM-100 (Pantech)　SKT and KT have

South Korea’s largest food and entertainment conglomerateCJ Group said Thursday that its incumbent chairman has undergone a surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung, raising fresh concerns of potential instability in the group’s top management.CJ Group chairman Sohn Kyung-shik, 76, received surgery at Seoul National University Hospital in central Seoul on Tuesday, and is now in a stable condition and recovering, CJ Group spokeswoman Yoon Yeo-jin said. CJ Group co-chairman Sohn Kyung-shi

South Korea’s leading mobile game company Netmarble Games has entered the race to acquire Israel-based social casino game developer Playtika in a deal valued at up to $4 billion, multiple sources in the local investment banking industry said Tuesday.　If successful, the deal would mark the largest acquisition by a Korean game company to date and significantly boost Netmarble’s market value ahead of its initial public offering scheduled for next year.According to local news reports, Netmarble has

Korea’s second-largest network operator KT unveiled a range of new ICT-based solutions and technologies Tuesday geared at improving maritime security.　The telecom firm’s standout technologies include a Long-Term Evolution network able to cover remote locations, as far as 200 kilometers away from land, a life jacket that can be tracked via Internet of Things technology and the creation of a new network designed for IoT devices. Oh Sung-mok, vice president of KT’s network division, introduces a ne

South Korea’s leading network operator SK Telecom launched a specialized network for the Internet of Things technology across the country on Monday, marking the world’s first commercial IoT network ever to be deployed nationwide, the company said.　SKT’s newly-launched LoRaWAN network, which stands for “long-range wide-area network,” is optimized to transmit small amounts of data at very low speeds of below 5Kbps, making it a fitting network for transferring data from a given object using limited