North Face slapped with biggest price-fixing fine
Korea’s best-selling U.S. outdoor clothing brand, The North Face, was slapped with a fine of 5.24 billion won ($4.62 million) for fixing prices of products available at its retail stores. It is the largest fine levied on a company for retail price fixing. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Sunday that the brand’s Seoul representative […]
Naver losing grip in Korea
Portal firm’s growth potential ebbing away as it sticks to comfort zone Naver, Korea’s biggest Web portal, is losing its grip on the domestic market. The local search giant is being cornered, needing to diversify its business portfolio amid a rapid rise of social networking services (SNS), according to market analysts. Though Naver is still […]
Plenty of bang for buck
Samsung Electronics chalks up record profits on mobile sales Samsung Electronics posted its best quarterly operating profit during the first three months of this year and is expected to improve on it during the seasonally-favorable second quarter. The world’s biggest supplier of flat screens, memory chips and smartphones reported 45.27 trillion won Friday in first-quarter […]
Samsung Electronics reports 81% surge in Q1 net
Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest maker of computer memory chips, said Friday that its first-quarter earnings surged 81.3 percent from a year earlier, fueled by strong sales of its Galaxy smartphones. Net profit amounted to 5.04 trillion won ($4.44 billion) in the January-March period, compared with a net income of 2.78 trillion won the […]
Tourists flock to Myeong-dong
Cosmetics most popular product among Chinese, Japanese Seoul’s Myeong-dong shopping district is the most popular tourist attraction among Japanese travelers, while Dongdaemun (east gate), another giant shopping area in the capital, is the most sought-after location among Chinese visitors, a survey showed Thursday. Inbound travelers from the two neighboring countries constituted more than half of […]
‘Korea, US cut secret beef deal’
Lawmaker claims gov’t complied with US demand for softer stance An opposition lawmaker alleged Thursday that the government promised the United States not to discontinue American beef imports even if a new case of mad cow disease was reported in a secret deal made in 2008. Rep. Park Joo-sun of the main opposition Democratic United […]
2012 Beijing Auto Show
The 2012 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition kicked off Monday at the China International Exhibition Center with domestic and global automakers filling the venue with new models. The biennial event will run through May 2. This year’s event is the largest ever, showing the increasing importance of China as the biggest car market in the world. […]
Exim focuses on Middle East, North Africa
The Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Eximbank) hosted an international business conference Wednesday aimed at connecting Korean companies with business executives and finance experts in fast-growing regions in the Middle East and North Africa. In a keynote speech at the conference, titled “Shaping the relationship between MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and Korea in […]
Myanmar to put low-cost mobile phones into service across country
YANGON — Myanmar telecommunications authorities announced on Wednesday that it will put low-cost mobile phones into service across the country next month. It said that GSM/WCDMA sim cards, which will be sold at a low price of 200,000 Kyats (247 U.S. dollars) since May 3, can be carried and used at any place across the […]
Korea 2nd on global cartel fines
Korean firms have been slapped with a total fine of 2.4 trillion won ($2.1 billion) by overseas anti-trust regulators since 2000 for price-fixing, the Fair Trade Commission said Tuesday. They had to pay nearly $1.27 billion in fines in the United States, and four out of 10 non-American businesses that had to pay high fines […]