South Korea’s exposure to a stressed global manufacturing supply chain has knocked its currency – Asia’s most risk sensitive – to over two-year lows as investors use it as a proxy to bet on the economic costs of a protracted US-China trade war. The won has dropped nearly 6% against the dollar this year, worse than some of its peers, ... Read More »
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Wednesday it plans to cut production at a smartphone plant in China, as competition from domestic rivals squeezes its share of the world’s biggest smartphone market to less than a paltry 1%. The output reduction at the factory in the southern city of Huizhou comes just six months after Samsung said it ... Read More »
Huawei Technologies unveiled an open lab for next-generation 5G wireless network in South Korea but kept the launch low-key given its recent blacklisting by the United States, a key security ally of the Asian nation. The Chinese tech giant, the world’s top producer of telecoms equipment, said it planned to invest about $5 million in the lab in the Junggu ... Read More »
The Korean shipbuilding industry is faltering due to sluggish global shipbuilding orders. Korean shipbuilders are lagging behind their Chinese rivals in landing orders in the second quarter after losing first place to China in the first quarter. Global shipbuilding orders continued to shrink in April year on year after the first quarter. Shipbuilding orders amounted to 5.73 million compensated gross ... Read More »
U.S. officials have been lobbying South Korea not to use Huawei Technologies Co Ltd products, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported. In one incident, a U.S. State Department official told a South Korean counterpart that local telco LG Uplus Corp, which uses Huawei’s equipment, should “not be allowed to serve in sensitive areas in South Korea,” the report said. Washington ... Read More »
The Korean shipbuilding industry is faltering due to sluggish global shipbuilding orders. Korean shipbuilders are lagging behind their Chinese rivals in landing orders in the second quarter after losing first place to China in the first quarter. Global shipbuilding orders continued to shrink in April year on year after the first quarter. Shipbuilding orders amounted to 5.73 million compensated gross ... Read More »
Last month, the world learned that North Korea attempted to sell submarine designs to Taiwan in 2016. As Taiwan and North Korea do not have formal relations, the offer came through an unusual channel: a Taiwanese trading company that did business with North Korea received a “mandate” from the National Defense Commission (now the State Affairs Commission). Taipei confirmed the ... Read More »
A Korean court said it had approved warrants to arrest two senior officials at Samsung Electronics in relation to an alleged accounting fraud at the tech giant’s biopharma affiliate. The Seoul Central District Court said in a statement it had granted warrants to arrest the officials suspected of destroying evidence in the case. Prosecutors accused the two Samsung Electronics officials ... Read More »
KB Kookmin Bank announced on that it has opened an investment banking (IB) unit in New York local time. The New York unit is the bank’s third IB unit following those in Hong Kong and London. Based on the three regional hubs which are set up in the global centers of IB deals, KB Kookmin Bank is planning to strengthen ... Read More »
Lotte Group said it would resume work on a $2.6 billion real estate project in China this month, after work was halted following the South Korean firm’s decision in 2017 to offer land in South Korea for a US anti-missile system. The South Korean real estate giant has invested about 3 trillion won ($2.58 billion) in the project in China’s ... Read More »
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd flagged improved second-half results on expectations of a pick up in memory chip and smartphone sales, after posting its weakest profit in more than two years in the first quarter. The world’s top maker of semiconductors, however, warned of more short-term pain in the second quarter, with memory chip prices likely to decline further ... Read More »
SEOUL: South Korea’s economy unexpectedly shrank in the first quarter, marking its worst performance since the global financial crisis, as companies slashed investment and exports slumped in response to Sino-U.S. trade tensions and cooling Chinese demand. The shock contraction boosted money market bets that the central bank is likely to make a U-turn on policy soon, shifting to an easing ... Read More »
A business lobby group of South Korea asked the US government to extend Korea’s exemption from sanctions on the purchase of Iranian oil. In a letter sent to Francis Fannon, US assistant secretary of state for energy resources, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) argued that the ending of South Korea’s waiver on buying oil from Iran could have a ... Read More »
South Koreans holding office jobs spend over 1.4 million won ($1,235) annually on cash gifts for special occasions, a poll showed Monday. The research, conducted by job research portal Saramin, involved 435 local office workers. Cash gifts cost about 73,000 won on average per event, the survey revealed, and respondents attended an average of 1.6 events per month, so their ... Read More »
SEOUL: SK Innovation Co Ltd is in talks to set up separate battery-making joint ventures with Volkswagen AG and Chinese partners, as the South Korean petrochemicals producer aggressively expands its involvement in electric vehicles (EVs). The company confirmed talks with Germany’s Volkswagen for the first time, telling Reuters the pair were discussing building a factory together. It also said it ... Read More »
Korean banks are expanding their global investment banking (IB) business one after another to diversify their revenue streams with their profits forecast to decline due to government regulations on lending and an economic downturn. For example, KB Kookmin Bank opened its IB unit in London last month. The purpose of the unit is to expand the bank’s IB business and ... Read More »
South Korea’s exports contracted at their steepest pace in nearly three years in February as demand from its major market China cooled further in yet another sign of faltering momentum in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Overseas sales dropped 11.1 per cent in annual terms, the sharpest decline since April 2016 and marked the third month of falling shipments. A Reuters survey ... Read More »
A South Korean supplier of Tesla Inc said it had agreed to buy a shuttered auto factory from General Motors’ local unit to start contract manufacturing of electric vehicles. The deal comes after GM closed one of its four South Korean plants in late May and let go thousands of workers, as part of a global restructuring drive which culminated ... Read More »
SK Innovation will invest 430 billion won (US$378 million) in Poland to build a Li-ion battery separator (LiBS) plant. SK Innovation announced on March 27 that it will expand investment to accelerate the growth of its materials business, which is to be spun off on April 1. The plant will be built on a site of 340 million square meters ... Read More »
South Korean Yozma Group Asia and group BioLeaders Corporation announced they will invest roughly 12 million USD in Israeli anti-cancer technology based on technology developed at the Weizmann institute of Science, the Institute reported. Yozma Group Asia will invest 2 million USD in On-Sight Medical Inc., which is currently developing an easy-to-use ultrasound technology that patients may use on their ... Read More »
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