South Korea's key stock index logged the largest daily gain in nearly seven months Friday, breaching the 3,100-point mark on stellar advances in market heavyweights such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor. The Korean won fell against the US dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 120.5 points, or 3.97 percent, to close at 3,152.18 points, registering the largest daily jump since June 16, 2020. Trading volume was exceptionally high at about 1.3 billion shares

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has sent a letter to President Moon Jae-in and requested South Korea's continued support for the global fight against COVID-19, Cheong Wa Dae said Friday. In the letter, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the rollout of new vaccines has given hope for the termination of the pandemic, according to Moon's spokesman Kang Min-seok. Tedros was quoted as adding that Moon's support for the COVAX Facility, a pooled procurement mech

President Moon Jae-in will issue his formal New Year's message next week, Cheong Wa Dae said Friday. During the address slated for Monday, he is expected to unveil policy priorities in the fifth year of his presidency, with South Korea locked in a prolonged fight against COVID-19. Moon plans to emphasize that people here will recover their daily lives through "win-win cooperation" and that they will head "with power" toward the goal of making South Korea a "leading cou

LG Electronics Inc. said Friday it will feature a virtual human as a speaker at the world's largest tech expo next week as the South Korean tech powerhouse aims to show off its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. LG said an artificial human, named Reah Keem, will deliver a three-minute presentation at its press event for the all-digital Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2021 on Monday. LG designed the virtual human as a 23-year-old female musician. It already has an Instagram page with mo

The BTS album "Map of the Soul: 7," featuring hit tracks "On" and "Boy with Luv," has been tallied as the bestselling physical album in the United States last year. Physical album sales of the septet's fourth full album released in February reached 646,000 in the US, according to an annual year-end report compiled by MRC Data in collaboration with Billboard. The report encompasses US music consumption data between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 last year. The report also show

The number of daily moviegoers plunged to a fresh record low this week, as new releases have been affected by the latest coronavirus resurgence in winter, data showed Friday. According to the data from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), 14,000-16,000 people went to theaters daily this week, down from last week's 34,000-60,000. In particular, only 14,518 attendees were recorded Monday, hitting an all-time low since KOFIC began to compile official box office data in 2004. It renewed the previous r

January is usually a bleak month after year-end festivities and the hype for ambitious New Year's resolutions have faded. But in the K-pop industry, January is set to be packed with debuts and comebacks by both rookies and veteran acts this year. On Monday, 12-piece group TREASURE is set to drop its first full album just five months after its debut. The boy band took the industry by storm last year, churning out three singles in just 100 days and selling more than 700,000 albums. The rookie ba

A former special inspector of the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae was sentenced by a local court on Friday to a one-year prison term, suspended for two years, for leaking classified official secrets. The Suwon District Court in Suwon, south of Seoul, handed out the suspended jail sentence to Kim Tae-woo, who worked for Cheong Wa Dae's special inspection team between July 2017 and November 2018, after convicting him on charges of divulgence of official secrets. Kim, who was a prosecution inve

South Korea's agricultural ministry said Friday it has confirmed the country's 48th case of highly pathogenic bird flu from a poultry farm, with the spread of the disease among wild birds further straining the country's antivirus fight. The latest case of the malign HN58 strain of bird flu came from a duck farm in Yeongam, 384 kilometers south of Seoul, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. South Korea issued a standstill order on all poultry farms in the region for

LG Electronics Inc. on Friday unveiled its upgraded smart TV platform that will be used for its 2021 TV models as the South Korean tech company eyes to improve its software capabilities. LG, the world's second-largest TV maker, said the webOS 6.0 will run on its 2021 TV sets including OLED, QNED Mini LED and NanoCell TVs, and will feature enhanced voice controls and user-friendly interface. The latest smart TV system will have a new design of a home screen that will allow users to easily acces

Samsung Electronics Co. on Friday unveiled a new laptop that runs on Google's Chrome operating system (OS) as the South Korean giant eyes to respond to the increasing popularity of distance learning amid the pandemic. Samsung's Galaxy Chromebook 2 is the industry's first Chrome OS-powered laptop with QLED display. The 2-in-1 notebook comes with a 13.3-inch QLED full HD display with a touch screen. The latest laptop also features "Smart AMP" sound, which runs up to 178 percent louder

Foreign investors turned net sellers of South Korean equities in December last year, as they took profits from a recent stock rally, the central bank said Friday. Foreigners sold a net $2.36 billion worth of local stocks last month, compared with a net purchase of $5.07 billion in November last year, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). Offshore investors also became net sellers of Korean bonds worth $170 million last month, the BOK said. Meanwhile, volatility in South Korea's currency fell

South Korea's small-sized construction equipment maker Doosan Bobcat Co. said Friday that it has bought a stake in US radar maker Ainstein. Doosan Bobcat did not reveal the vale of the deal, or how much stake it bought in the US company, citing a confidentiality agreement with the US firm. The stake purchase is a preemptive move to dominate the unmanned small-sized construction equipment market, which has been growing at a rapid pace, Doosan Bobcat said. Ainstein, based in Kansas, offers a fu

As the immigration film "Minari," directed by Korean American Lee Isaac Chung, has been on a roll in the award season, hopes are high that its supporting South Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung could get an Oscar nod. Youn, who took the role of the eccentric grandmother in Chung's semi-autobiographical film, has won a total of seven best supporting actress trophies in US film critics circles and festivals including the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, the North Carolina Film Critics and the B

South Korea plans to increase budgetary support for the purchase of electric and hydrogen cars by around 30 percent this year in a bid to nurture the next-generation vehicle sector, the finance minister said Friday. The country has set the non-memory chip, bio-health and next-generation vehicle sectors as the "BIG 3" industries that it seeks to nurture for job creation and innovation-driven growth. As part of such efforts, the country will spend 1.4 trillion won ($1.3 billion) to sup

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), a Korean American congressman, received wide attention and praise on Thursday for helping clean up the mess from the previous day's insurrection at the US Capitol. Thousands of angry protesters stormed the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday while the Senate and the House of Representatives were trying to certify the outcome of the Nov. 3 presidential election. One person was shot to death while three others died of medical issues, while many protesters breac

North Korean state media made no mention of its leader Kim Jong-un's presumed 37th birthday on Friday amid its detailed report on an ongoing rare party congress. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the ruling party, carried articles on the eighth party congress of the ruling Workers' Party, the country's biggest political event, but did not mention his birthday. The North's state Korean Central Television (KCTV) also kicked off its program at 9 a.

Police have raided the headquarters of South Korea's leading furniture maker Hanssem Co. this week as part of a probe into its alleged slush fund creation and graft charges, an official said Friday. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency sent investigators to the compound in western Seoul the previous day to search for potential evidence. Having combed a computer server room and offices in charge of budget operation and public relations, they secured documents and other materials, according to th

LG Electronics Inc. on Friday said it has signed a partnership with South Korea's top internet portal operator Naver Corp. to enter the remote learning service business amid the pandemic. Under the deal, the two sides will develop a notebook dedicated to Naver's online education platform Whale Space. Tentatively named "Whalebook," it will be a cloud-optimized laptop powered Whale operating system (OS). The two tech firms also agreed to seek further business opportunities that can uti

Video streaming services in South Korea are headed for heated competition this year as local media companies and global giants alike splurge on original content to take a solid position in the booming local market. Earlier this week, local media giant CJ ENM Co. said it is partnering with production company JTBC Studios to operate its over-the-top (OTT) service Tving. CJ ENM said the new joint venture will invest 400 billion won ($365.3 million) in production costs over the next three years in