Tag: business

Some further relief for business owners in South Korea:

The government said Saturday it will allow businesses outside the greater Seoul area to operate until 10 p.m. starting next week, relaxing the distancing rules amid growing discontent over the prolonged virus curbs. 

The revised measure will permit businesses like restaurants and fitness clubs to extend their operating hours by one hour under Level 2 distancing currently imposed on the provincial regions, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said in a government response meeting.

“After careful deliberation based on the various opinions from all walks of life, we are adjusting the business hours for publicly used facilities,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Major conglomerates in South Korea are ready to push back against the ruling party’s attempt to make them give up profits to other companies not making profits. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out:

The move is sparking backlash from large business owners, with major companies claiming the measures are only implemented in socialist or communist countries. Companies have also been criticizing the proposal over the lack of guidelines determining on which level a company is deemed profitable.

The ruling party has stressed that the profit-sharing scheme would not be compulsory and that each company’s voluntary participation would be encouraged through various incentives. However, business insiders believe the government will continue to pressure firms to take part in the initiatives.

“The government says it is voluntary but will continue to pressure firms to take part in the profit-sharing scheme,” an industry official said. “The Moon Jae-in administration has restrained companies with dozens of new regulations that severely impact business operations. This administration has pressured companies financially much more than other previous governments.”

Dozens of corporations including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Kakao and Woowa Brothers are expected to be subject to the scheme as they have been able secure large profits amid the prolonged pandemic.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it is the responsibility of the government that shutdown companies like restaurants and bars to subsidize them through tax money, not other private businesses.

This is a pretty prestigious recognition for Coupang:

Coupang is No. 2 on the 2020 CNBC Disruptor list.  
   
It is the first Korean company to make it onto the list, which has been published by the U.S. business channel since 2013. Coupang was also the first Korean company to be nominated.  
   
Each year, the broadcaster identifies 50 private companies with breakthroughs influencing business and market competition. All private, independently owned start-up companies founded after Jan. 1, 2005 were eligible to be nominated this year.  
   
Coupang was ranked No. 2 from a total 1,355 nominees selected by the station and a board of advisors.    
   
How the companies reacted to the coronavirus was key in the selection process this year. CNBC gave credit to the retailer’s fast delivery service, and its effort to replenish necessities, such as face masks and hand sanitizers, during the pandemic.    
   
The American broadcaster ranked Coupang high on the list considering its ability to withstand a rush of online orders during the virus outbreak while maintaining its quality delivery service. CNBC complimented the company for freezing the prices of face masks and hand sanitizers to prevent customers from being adversely affected by the disruption in the supply chain caused by the outbreak.    
   
Coupang said in a statement Wednesday that its vast logistics network and infrastructure it aggressively built in recent years may have helped it reach second place. The retailer claims more than 70 percent of the Korean population lives 10 minutes away from its “Rocket Delivery” logistics hubs.    
   
Coupang said it will continue to contribute to the fight against the pandemic. It created around 20,000 jobs in the first quarter in the face of a national unemployment crisis.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The future is here and now even the convenience store clerk may become obsolete:

According to Bloomberg, Amazon said it will increase the number of its smart stores to nearly 3,000 across the nation by 2021. This also led GS Retail to launch the first cashierless convenience store here in Sept. 2018 in Magok, western Seoul. Following this, other local retail giants have opened smart stores adopting hi-tech payment systems.

The most prominent example is the GS25 store that opened on the 20th floor of Eulji Twin Tower in Jung-gu, central Seoul, two weeks ago.

There are over 34 smart cameras installed in the store with some 300 weight sensors that all connect to an artificial intelligence (AI) system, which plays the cashier role. 

Cameras watch customers’ behavior and their movement around the store while sensors detect which items they have picked. When a customer finishes shopping, they can just walk out of the store and the payment is processed automatically through a mobile application. 

Despite the convenience, customers are expressing mixed feelings about cashierless stores.

“This is so cool. I don’t have to wait in the queue and I can just grab and go without taking my wallet out of my pocket,” said 31-year-old nurse Lee Jung-soo. “Sometimes I felt sorry for people behind me waiting for me to pay at the convenience store but this new automatic payment system allows me to walk out without stopping.”

However, 35-year-old office worker Kim Jong-bum expressed his discomfort over the move, saying the system could lead to problems involving privacy protection.

“Think about it. Cameras watching you everywhere, anytime. This AI program will first be adopted to convenience stores, then to restaurants and clothing shops. It is only a matter of time until they all connect to put you under surveillance,” Kim said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

We could be seeing the beginning of the end of Asiana Airlines:

Thirty-one years and two months ago, Asiana Airlines was founded. Very soon, it could be history after its controlling shareholder said it would be selling off the debt-laden carrier.

Asiana Airlines was formed in 1988, the year the Olympic Games were held in Seoul, as Seoul Air International. 

The Chun Doo Hwan government in February 1988 approved the Kumho Group, as it was known at the time, to form the country’s second private airline. The market had been monopolized by Korean Air.

The Summer Games put Korea on the global map, but there was a shortage of flights to transport the visitors. In August 1988, Asiana inaugurated its first service and changed its name in December.

While the airline first operated with a single Boeing 737, it enjoyed the Golden Age of travel in the 1990s along with its competitor as the government lifted the overseas travel ban, and Koreans started going abroad en masse.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more about Asiana Airlines at the link. I like flying Korean Air better than Asiana Airlines, but I still thought it was a good airline. I would rather fly Asiana than any of the major US airlines.

Here is a lawyer who thinks that North Korea is a great place to invest:

North Korea has an advanced arbitration system even compared to developed countries, and foreign companies face an even playing field in dispute resolution, according to Michael Hay, the founder of North Korea’s only foreign law firm Hay, Kalb & Associates. 

“From start to finish, (an arbitration case) could be done in six months… which is much faster than most other countries I have worked in,” Hay said in an interview with The Korea Times at his office in Seoul, Monday. 

He has been a foreign legal counsel at HMP Law since December, after 12 years of operating his law firm in the North.

Hay emphasized that the North Korean regime has no choice but to maintain an advanced dispute resolution system in order to continue reeling in foreign investment and companies.

“One thing North Koreans are very conscious of: If they don’t have a dispute resolution system, people will not come and invest in the country. In my experience they are very supportive (of foreign firms),” he said.

Korea Times

You can read the rest at the link, but Mr. Hay says that the businesses that lost money in North Korea did so because they grandstanded about doing business in North Korea. He says businesses that kept their dealings quiet with the regime were more successful.

Along with the sexism here, the problem with so many Korean workplaces is how much they depend on _your_ loyalty for employee retention. That, and the age discrimination that makes it harder for you to find work elsewhere the longer you stay. https://t.co/jdmFTMh5SN

— the oranckay (@oranckay) November 14, 2018

A South Korean millionaire who founded & runs file-sharing sites notorious for sharing revenge porn/spycam porn videos is under probe for beating & abusing workers by forcing them to eat a handful of raw garlic, dye their hair red/green & kill live chickens with crossbows. https://t.co/icEI5raOxG

— Hawon Jung (@allyjung) November 1, 2018

It is going to be interesting to see how much market the new Homeplus Special warehouse store is going to be able to capture in South Korea:

The second basement of Home plus’ Mokdong branch in southwestern Seoul looked totally different, Wednesday, as the discount store’s space selling groceries has been converted into a warehouse store with capacious shelves piled with boxes.

“As I said in March at a press conference about the business strategy of Home plus, we will unveil Home plus Special today to fulfill our promise to make a store satisfying our customers,” Home plus CEO Lim Il-soon said at a press conference, a day before the opening of Seoul’s first Home plus Special. “We opened Home plus Special stores in Daegu and Busan last month, and they have been well-received by consumers.”

Defining Mokdong as the battlefield of retailers in Korea, she predicted fierce competition with Yangpyung Costco Warehouse and Lotte Vic Market’s Yeongdeungpo branch, which are 1.6 kilometers and 2.7 kilometers from Home plus Special, respectively.

Home plus, however, is confident the new warehouse store will be a success.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest social justice cause that is targeting Korean-American business owners:

Earlier this month, Councilwoman Cindy Bass introduced a bill to better regulate the hundreds of “stop and go” convenience stores that operate predominantly in Philadelphia’s low-income neighborhoods. Among its stipulations, the controversial measure would prohibit any physical barrier that separates cashiers from customers at these so-called “nuisance” establishments – including protective bulletproof glass.

According to Bass, these storefronts take advantage of the city’s lax restaurant liquor license provision while contributing to a variety of quality-of-life issues in low-income communities. Content to rely solely on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol, along with a bag of Doritos or two, many of these business owners don’t even sell the food that they advertise.  [PhillyMag.com]

The councilwoman claims that these stores help promote crime because they sell alcohol and cigarettes.   I find it interesting how she puts the onus on the business owners to stop crime instead of the police or the public.  What else is interesting is that many of these business owners are Korean-American:

Rich Kim’s family has run the deli, which sells soda, snacks, meals and beer by the can for 20 years.  He says the glass went up after a shooting and claims it saved his mother-in-law from a knife attack. Now, he may be forced to take some of the barrier down.

“If the glass comes down, the crime rate will rise and there will be lots of dead bodies,” he said.

A bill moving through city council reads: “No establishment shall erect or maintain a physical barrier.”

It’s called the ‘Stop and Go’ bill and is being offered by City Councilwoman Cindy Bass.

“Right now, the plexiglass has to come down,” she said.

She wants to put some controls on these small stores that she says sell booze, very little food and are the source of trouble in her district.

Rich Kim resents the charge stores like his attract loiters and argues calls to police are often met with a slow response.

Mike Choe runs a non-profit supporting Korean-owned businesses. He plans on raising $100,000 to fight the measure.

“I do think it’s a bad bill that will endanger Korean Americans,’ he said.

Bass says she’s battling for her constituents.

Kim argues as a Korean-American he’s being targeted.

“This bill targets Korean Americans,” Cole asked. Bass responded, “Absolutely not. I find that offensive.” [Fox 29]

The tensions between Korean-American business owners and African-American communities has been simmering since the 1992 LA Riots when Koreantown was a major target of the rioters.  It has continued in recent years when riots in Baltimore and Missouri targeted Korean-American businesses.  There was also the protests to shutdown a Korean-American gas station in Dallas:

Muhammad, 44, who was appointed to his post in 1994 by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, says Pak must go. So should other Asian-American merchants in black neighborhoods, he says.

Could you imagine the uproar if legislation was passed that targeted African-Americans to make them more easy victims of crime and to put them out of business?  That is clearly what some of the social justice warriors are trying to do with violence, legislation, and protests to push the Korean-American business owners out of black communities.  Yet racism directed towards Korean-Americans draws little national media attention.