Category: Korea-Business

It will be interesting to see if under her leadership she is able to make Naver a global IT brand:

Naver will become an incubator that creates innovative technology penetrating the global market and seek to go beyond providing services that are popular today, the company’s new CEO said Monday. 

“Not only all businesses owned by Naver began with the thought of going global from the start, but all of the objectives also point to going global,” Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon said at a meeting with shareholders and board of directors where she was appointed as the new chief.

The IT giant will focus all of its management efforts on becoming a global top-tier internet company, it added.

The appointment of the 41-year-old female executive marks a major shift in its management, the company said. Choi is the youngest CEO to lead Naver, South Korea’s fourth-largest company by market capitalization. Having Choi as CEO signifies that the management will be led by the younger generation who grew up with the internet, and no longer by those who pursued evolution of the platform businesses.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

If you are committed to ruining your lungs THIS cigarettes gives you the option to do it as cheaply as possible:

Two decades after its entry into the United States, local tobacco maker KT&G became the fifth best-selling cigarette company in the country. 

The low price of THIS cigarettes, which used to be widely smoked in Korea in the 1990s, is the reason why. In its first month of sales in the United States in December 2017, KT&G sold 1.36 million THIS cigarettes – a figure that skyrocketed to 38.25 million in June 2018. By June 2019, that figure jumped to 200.4 million, almost fivefold from the same month a year earlier. 

KT&G is particularly proud considering that the United States, along with China and Indonesia, are major cigarette markets that see fierce competition among some 100 global companies. KT&G’s market share in the United States now stands at fifth, ahead of JTI, or Japan Tobacco International, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.

KT&G attributed its success to its cheap price. Distributed at big-box retailers like Costco and Walmart’s Sam’s Club, THIS cigarettes cost as little as $2.97 per pack. The product is promoted in the United States with the tagline, “Is This price for real?”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I guess we will see how long this position lasts with other electronic rivals like Sony and Apple developing plans to enter the EV market:

After Sony made a surprise announcement that it would start making electric vehicles, everyone at CES 2022 wanted to know if Samsung Electronics was going to too.  

Han Jong-hee, the vice chairman of the tech giant who oversees consumer electronics and smartphones, suggested not Wednesday, although automotive devices and parts are of interest to the company.   

“We’ve expanded the automotive business, especially through an acquisition of Harman,” Han said during a press conference on the sidelines of the tech trade show, which runs through Jan. 7.    
“But we don’t have any plan to enter car manufacturing,” he said. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but Samsung at one time had Samsung Motors that built cars. However, this venture failed and they ended up selling it to Renault. This prior failure may be why they are hesitant to enter the EV market.

Though it looks like Texas will be the choice, I am kind of surprised to hear that New York is on Samsung’s short list for their new chip plant considering the state’s infamous taxes:

Samsung Electronics Co. appears to be moving closer to making a final decision on the site for its new chip fabrication plant in the United States, as global semiconductor companies have engaged in increasingly fierce competition amid a global chip crunch.

The South Korean tech giant was found to have withdrawn its application filed in January with Manor Independent School District (ISD) in Travis County, Texas, for corporate tax incentives regarding its new chip plant, the Texas comptroller’s website showed.

School districts in the state constitute an important party in the negotiations over building a new plant. 

The same kind of document filed in July with the city of Taylor, northeast of Austin, can still be found on the public site.

The two locations in Texas have been competing against each other to host the global chipmaker’s new plant believed to be worth US$17 billion. The South Korean company did not rule out other sites in New York and Arizona for potential sites.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

One of the things I love about South Korea is the high number of self-employed mom & pop stores that are few and far between in America now. The COVID protocols are really crushing these businesses now:

In the hit Netflix series, “Squid Game,” the main character, Seong Gi-hun, joins the fight-to-the-death challenge, driven by the 400 million won he owes, after the failure of his restaurants, a business he started after losing his job at a car manufacturing company. Hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in the economy, many small business owners say they are no different from Seong. 

In an internet forum on the country’s top search engine and platform, Naver, where the self-employed share information, a man who runs a small sushi restaurant said he could not take his eyes off the show. “The show depicts in detail what it is like to be on the edge of a precipice,” he wrote. Another said he felt like he was living right in the middle of the game. The only difference is that “there will be no prize money even if I win,” he commented.

According to the National Self-Employed Emergency Response Committee, at least 22 small business owners have taken their own lives since the coronavirus pandemic began. One of them retrieved the deposit for her one-room studio apartment so as to pay her part-time workers before committing suicide. For many, even if the business is continuously incurring losses, immediately shutting down is not an option because they cannot terminate their rental contract without losing additional deposit money.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

If these teleworkers have work from home syndrome than the entire U.S. military needs to get diagnosed with this disorder because even when you are off duty you are still on duty. Maybe servicemembers can get an extra VA rating for this 😉 :

Three out of every 10 employees who telecommute are experiencing “work-from-home (WFH) syndrome” as the pandemic rolls on and the boundary between work and life blurs. 

According to a survey of 910 remote workers conducted by recruiting platform Job Korea from Sept. 3 to 10, 32.1 percent of the respondents said they have experienced the WFH syndrome, experienced as physical and emotional stress.

Where multiple answers were allowed, 54.8 percent said they experienced the feeling that they were still working even after work hours, similar to 46.2 percent who answered they felt a nervous and stressed all day. 

“In a from-home working environment, the physical distinction between work and home life is pretty vague. I think that’s why I can’t get my mind off of work even when my computer is turned off and feel like I’m working all day,” said a 28-year-old employee in Seoul who asked to be identified only by her surname Kim. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This CNBC article says Google makes $426k a minute. So it will take Google about 7 hours today to make enough money to pay this fine:

 South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Tuesday it has decided to fine global tech giant Google 207.4 billion won (US$176.8 million) for pressing smartphone makers into only using its Android mobile operating system.

Since 2016, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has been looking into Google over allegations it obstructed local smartphone makers, such as Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc., from using operating systems developed by rivals.

Google has hampered market competition by requiring smartphone makers to clinch an “anti-fragmentation agreement (AFA)” when they sign key contracts with Google over app store licenses and early access to OS, according to the regulator.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Only the hedgefunds are supposed to game the market, not the little people:

A group of retail investors here have dropped their plans to conduct a mass buying of a certain stock on the Seoul bourse, which was initially supposed to take place this month to protest against short-sellers, most of whom are foreign and institutional investors.

The Korea Stockholders Alliance (KSA) announced Sunday that the decision was made after taking into account the advice from its legal advisers and the predictable scenarios.

“Our campaign has been described as a form of speculation aiming for a short-term margin, and above all, short-sellers’ interruptions that rattled the market have created negative public sentiment toward us,” one of the alliance’s managers wrote on its website.

The group had tried to emulate U.S. social media platform Reddit’s WallStreetBets internet forum users, who sparked a short squeeze of the GameStop stock on the New York Stock Exchange in January through a mass-purchase of the American video game retailer’s stocks.

The campaign conducted by retail investors surprised global market insiders at that time, because an unexpected hike in the GameStop stock price caused large losses to several hedge funds that had bet on the price fall.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I always figured a chaebol family figure would lead this ranking, but it ends up being a self made tech entrepreneur instead:

The self-made founder of Kakao has become the country’s richest person, backed by stock gains this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bloomberg reported that Kakao Chairman Kim Beom-su, 55, has a net worth of $13.4 billion (15.4 trillion won), which places him at the top of Korea’s wealth rankings. Following him is Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, with a net worth of $12.1 billion.

Kim’s assets ballooned by more than $6 billion this year as Kakao’s share price surged 91 percent from early January. The tech company’s stock gains were fueled by scheduled listings of multiple affiliates this year, including internet-based lender Kakao Bank, which will make its local stock market debut next month.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

If you have kids you probably know what Roblox is and apparently many Korean investors know as well:

Tesla and Apple have long been the most popular foreign stocks for Korean investors — but not anymore.    
   
Between July 1 and July 23, Korean investors purchased a net $86.54 million worth of shares of Alphabet, which owns Google, making it the most popular foreign stock, according to data from the Korea Securities Depository.   
   
The second most popular was Roblox, a California-based online game developer, of which Koreans purchased a net $75.95 million.  
   
The rise of the metaverse drove its popularity. Roblox allows users to develop their own mini-games, share them with others and change the in-game currency, Robux, into real money. The allowing of users to build their own worlds and make real money has made it a hot metaverse platform.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.