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Tag: Korea

  • LG takes the wraps off of X2 budget phone

    LG takes the wraps off of X2 budget phone

    LG Electronics on Thursday unveiled its budget LG X2 smartphone, which comes with a 5-inch HD screen and will be distributed through local mobile carriers.

    The company said the LG X2 will come with a price tag of 198,000 won ($176) and have an Auto Shot feature that automatically recognizes faces when taking selfies.

    The smartphone will have an 8-megapixel camera on the back along with a 5-megapixel camera on the front. Its battery capacity will be 2,500mAh.

    LG Electronics, which has been suffering from losses in its mobile business, claimed that the release of the new budget model will help the company reach out to a wider range of consumers.

    The company released its flagship LG G7 ThinQ model earlier this year, along with the LG V30S ThinQ, which came with stronger artificial intelligence features.

    In 2018, LG also introduced the LG X4 and LG X4 Plus with more affordable price tags, along with the LG X5, which has a large battery capacity of 4,500mAh. The company released the LG Q7 and Q7 Plus, too.

    The company said it aims to continue rolling out various smartphones with strong durability and improved features.

    LG’s mobile operations have effectively posted operating losses for 12 consecutive quarters as of the January-March period this year. It did manage to report an operating profit in the first quarter of 2017 through an adjustment by reflecting returns from its accessories business. LG originally said it posted a loss for the period.

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  • Lotte Japan votes to keep imprisoned Shin on board

    Lotte Japan votes to keep imprisoned Shin on board

    Shareholders of Lotte’s Japanese holding company voted to retain imprisoned Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin as director, dashing his estranged older brother Shin Dong-joo’s hopes to take over the position.

    At the meeting held at Lotte Holdings’ headquarters in Tokyo, shareholders voted against ousting Shin Dong-bin from the board and replacing him with his older brother. Shin Dong-joo has been trying to overthrow his brother since all of his titles, including vice chairman of Lotte Japan, were stripped from him in 2015. This was his fifth unsuccessful attempt to win over Lotte Holdings’ shareholders.

    His younger brother Shin Dong-bin, who has been in jail since February on charges of bribery related to President Park Geun-hye’s abuse of power scandal, requested bail earlier this month in order to make his case to the shareholders in the latest meeting. However, his request went unanswered until late Thursday. A team of Lotte Group executives in Korea, including Vice Chairman Hwang Gak-gyu, had to deliver Shin’s letter to Lotte Holdings’ top management.

    “We’re relieved that the shareholders of Lotte’s Japanese unit expressed their support for Chairman Shin despite his vacancy,” said Lotte Corporation, Lotte’s Korean holding company, in a statement issued immediately after the results came out.

    The statement also condemned Shin Dong-joo. It requested that he “stop evoking needless controversies that create an uneasy sentiment among [Lotte] employees and degrade the company’s value.”

    Shin Dong-joo issued a statement through his SDJ Corporation that the older Shin will “continue pushing efforts to normalize Lotte Group,” implying that he may continue to campaign to take over his younger brother’s position at the retail conglomerate.

    A few days after his imprisonment, Shin resigned as co-CEO of Lotte Holdings. The chairman’s detainment raised concerns at the group’s Korean unit, as Shin Dong-joo reignited his efforts to regain control over Lotte.

    Friday’s vote, however, indicates that Lotte’s Japanese unit still has faith in Shin Dong-bin’s leadership, despite a tendency for Japanese shareholders to be harsher on top brass accused of bribery charges.

    Lotte Holdings and its other Japanese affiliates currently own a large stake in the group’s core Korean businesses, like Hotel Lotte and Lotte Property & Development. Their approval is crucial for Lotte Group’s Korean affiliates’ plan to reduce the stakes that Japanese affiliates hold in them.

    “The restructuring is not a one-shot deal – we’re doing what we can, like acquiring shares little by little,” said a Lotte Group spokesman.

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  • Korean Brands Increasing Popularity Among Hong Kong Consumers Over Japanese Brands

    Korean Brands Increasing Popularity Among Hong Kong Consumers Over Japanese Brands

    A Nielsen report shows Korean products have usurped the popularity of Japanese products among young Hong Kong consumers.

    The report traces the local market’s perception of Japanese and Korean trends to assess which is perceived as being more popular. It shows that for the first time, more than half of respondents aged 18 to 54 are confident in the longevity of Korean pop-culture influences in the near future.

    Some 80 per cent of millennials, in a response pattern that skewed towards women, preferred Korean trends. And 88 per cent of higher-income respondents were shown to have strong brand recognition for Korean products and to have visited Korea twice within the last year.

    Key drivers behind Korean trends are shown to be entertainment, fashion, and personal care targeted at millennial buyers. Korean food products are also increasingly popular in Hong Kong.

    A third of all respondents indicated an intention to increase spending on Korean products in future.

    Nielsen Hong Kong & Macau’s MD Michael Lee said: “With the Korean market slowly emerging in Hong Kong, Korean brands can succeed and win Hong Kong customers’ buy in by being more customer focused, showing emphasis on product quality and charging a premium with innovation. This will certainly open up a new market for opportunities to come”.

    The Nielsen report’s release coincides with an announcement by Chinese online marketing platform iClick Interactive Asia Group that it will form a strategic partnership with MezzoMedia, a Korean digital marketing solutions firm. The move is intended to further open the large Chinese consumer base up to Korean brands.

    MezzoMedia senior VP Kim Jin-Kyu said: “As one of Korea’s largest agencies, we work with brands that have significant appeal to the Chinese consumer… [iClick] will allow targeting into the largest internet audience in the world. In addition, their strategic relations with Tencent, Baidu and Ctrip give access to premium inventory.”

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  • Struggling Hyundai Heavy lays off quite a few execs

    Struggling Hyundai Heavy lays off quite a few execs

    Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipbuilder by sales, said Sunday it has cut a third of its executives in its offshore and engineering division as new orders have dried up.

    The move came a month before the shipbuilder is due to suspend work at its offshore facilities shipyard. The suspension scheduled for August is the first in 35 years.

    Hyundai Heavy has lost out to Chinese and Singaporean rivals in offshore projects in recent years due to its higher costs. The labor costs of Chinese and Singaporean shipbuilders are roughly a third of Hyundai Heavy’s.

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  • Galaxy Note9 invitation hints at revamped stylus

    Galaxy Note9 invitation hints at revamped stylus

    Samsung Electronics is scheduled to unveil its Galaxy Note9 phablet on Aug. 9 in New York, according to an invitation the company sent to media on Thursday.

    The unpacking event for the next flagship smartphone will take place at 11 a.m. local time on Aug. 9, or midnight on Aug. 10 in Korea, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The showcase will also be livestreamed on the Samsung website.

    Unlike previous years, Samsung opted not to include a catchphrase for the new model on the invitation – the Note8 missive came with the slogan “Do bigger things” – instead showing a magnified image of the button on the Note series’ signature S Pen stylus in gold on a blue background.

    The teaser video released with the invitation confirms that the button is on the S Pen, indicating that the new stylus will have enhanced features.

    Some early reports speculate that Samsung has added Bluetooth to the stylus, while other rumors guess that the pen will include a microphone to allow users to make phone calls. The button could be used for capturing images or video on the phone.

    According to a series of leaks, the Note9 has a 6.4-inch super AMOLED display – even bigger than the Note8’s 6.3 inches and S9+’s 6.2 inches. Aside from the increased size, there are few rumors suggesting any other dramatic changes to the phone itself, implying that the revamped S Pen could be the most revolutionary feature in the new device.

    The event for the Note9 comes about two weeks earlier than the Note8, which was first showcased on Aug. 23 last year and began shipping Sept. 21.

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  • Hyundai Department Store slashes workdays for sales staff

    Hyundai Department Store slashes workdays for sales staff

    Hyundai Department Store is introducing last-minute measures to comply with the new 52-hour workweek, which goes into effect next week.

    Korea’s third-largest department store chain is reducing the working hours of its sales staff by one hour, the company said on Thursday.

    “It’s a measure that will catch up with today’s social atmosphere that emphasizes work-life balance,” said the company in a statement.

    Fifteen department stores and four discount outlets nationwide will be affected by the measure. Sales workers who used to come to work at 10 a.m. and left at 8 p.m. will go home at 7 p.m. starting July 1.

    The stores’ operating hours, however, will remain 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. The one-hour vacuum left by the change will be filled in by the heads of each sales department and other workers taking turns in groups of 10.

    “We also took into account concerns among our business partners that their revenues will be hit hard when the operating hours shrink, as the economic slowdown is already continuing,” said a Hyundai spokesman.

    The company launched a pilot program that let sales employees leave work 30 minutes early in April, and the experiment was a success.

    Hyundai’s department store rivals – Lotte and Shinsegae – were quicker to slash either their working hours or operating hours, as they started to do so late in May. Hyundai is noted for its conservative work system, but it had to yield to the industry-wide trend, according to an insider.

    Shinsegae Department Store announced earlier this week that it would delay its opening time by one hour to 11 a.m. starting on July 2, with the exception of its main store in central Seoul and branches in Gangnam and South Chungcheong. Its closing hours will be the same as before, at 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8:30 p.m. on weekends. Lotte has yet to adjust the operating hours for its department stores.

    Lotte Confectionary, Lotte Chilsung, Lotte Liquor and Lotte Food also announced on Thursday that they hired 200 more manufacturing workers to cope with the new workweek. The additional workers make up more than 10 percent of the entire existing production work force.

    The four affiliates have also vowed to introduce a flexible working hour system based on a three-month basis, given that seasonal demand in the food business fluctuates heavily.

    Lotte, the fifth-largest conglomerate in Korea, has been particularly proactive about the government’s move to improve the country’s working environment.

    Thirty of its subsidiaries have designated hours that employee computers must be shut off to make sure employees cannot work before 9:30 a.m. or after 6:30 p.m.

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  • Lotte Duty Free to open its second store in Vietnam

    Lotte Duty Free to open its second store in Vietnam

    Lotte Duty Free said Sunday that it has opened its second store in Vietnam at Nha Trang Cam Ranh International Airport as it strives to expand its presence in the Asian market and better serve Chinese and Russian visitors.

    The company, a major player in the duty-free business, said its new store started operating Saturday, as the new passenger terminal at the airport opened for business. It said Lotte has the sole rights to operate the duty-free store at the airport until 2028.

    The airport serves the Nha Trang area in the central part of the Southeast Asian country, with both domestic and international flights being offered to users.

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  • Sephora Korea to open door next year

    Sephora Korea to open door next year

    A situations vacant post has revealed French beauty brand Sephora’s plans to launch in Korea next year.

    The job posting for a human resources manager with Sephora Korea included an announcement that the personal and beauty care store chain will be opening an outlet in Korea in the third quarter of next year.

    While this is the brand’s first venture into the South Korean market, it already operates a network of 2300 stores worldwide since being acquired by luxury conglomerate LVMH in 1997. It has operated in China since 2005, where it has 222 outlets.

    Sephora Korea is likely to face tough competition from the local brands dominating the domestic market.

  • Korean Air brand value plummets following scandal

    Korean Air brand value plummets following scandal

    The brand value of Korean Air fell sharply in the second quarter over a series of allegations involving the family that owns it, an appraisal website showed Sunday.

    The flag carrier’s brand value ranked 36th in the April-June period, down from 11th a quarter earlier, according to Brandstock, a South Korean market research firm that determines the rankings of local brands.

    The decline reflects the intense public criticism directed at Korean Air Chairman Cho Yang-ho’s family over a series of allegations of physical and verbal abuse, as well as smuggling and tax evasion.

    Korean Air’s brand value dropped 39 notches in the quarter following the incident.

    Brandstock said Korean Air’s smaller local rival, Asiana Airlines, saw its brand rank rise to 25th place in the second quarter from 35th place three months earlier.

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  • Homeplus Special to open first store in Daegu

    Homeplus Special to open first store in Daegu

    Korean discount store chain Homeplus has opened a bulk products and grocery store hybrid called Homeplus Special in Daegu.

    The new concept store is housed in the original Homeplus outlet that opened 20 years ago, now converted to operate the new big-box-plus-retail model following underwhelming sales figures and strong rivalry from industry competitors.

    The new hybrid-store concept will allow the brand to target both individual shoppers and businesses that buy in bulk, and aims to eliminate seasonal price differences with blanket, year-round discounts.

    A Homeplus spokesperson said the business plans to convert 15 branches into Homeplus Special stores this year. Another outlet opened yesterday in Busan.

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  • Shinsegae unveils its first independent hotel in Seoul

    Shinsegae unveils its first independent hotel in Seoul

    L’Escape, Shinsegae’s new boutique hotel, aims to combine the ambience of 19th-century Paris with intriguing restaurants and bars from Korean and foreign trendsetters.

    Located in central Seoul, behind the main Shinsegae Department Store branch, L’Escape opened its doors to the press for the first time.

    “Our ultimate goal is to be a lifestyle platform that offers trendy cultural content and food experiences to enjoy inside the hotel,” said L’Escape’s General Manager Kim Bum-soo. “365 days a year, L’Escape will have something going on, whether it’s a party or [pop-up restaurant by] globally renowned chefs and sommeliers.”

    During the event, L’Escape unveiled a list of partners that collaborated to develop the hotel’s restaurants, bar and cafe. They include Seoul-based dessert cafe Maison M’O, bartender team Taxonomy and The Modern, a two-Michelin-star restaurant located in New York.

    The hotel’s exterior and interior was designed by French architect Jacques Garcia, famous for his luxurious boutique hotels, such as the Hotel Costes in Paris and the NoMad Hotel in New York City.

    Shinsegae also invested heavily in guest amenities for the new hotel. The company hired foreign experts and brands to develop exclusive products for L’Escape, from flower decorations to bedding. Perfumer Alienor Massnet, who has worked with Maison Martin Margiela and Memo Paris, developed a signature scent that will be made into candles and sprays applied to the guest rooms.

    L’Escape’s general manager himself was a major contributor to selecting and signing partnerships. Better known as Pat2Bach, Kim is a well-known power blogger in food and leisure circles.

    Kim was invited to join Shinsegae Group by its Vice President Chung Yong-jin in 2011, and has helped launch the company’s craft beer pub Devil’s Door and organized the eateries inside Starfield malls.

    His appointment as the hotel’s general director is a bit of a surprise, though, as he has no experience as a professional hotelier. “My ambition is to meld the food and cultural experiences I’ve had,” he said. “I think of myself more as a producer that shapes the hotel as a whole instead of a conventional general manager that greets guests.”

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  • Starbucks Korea to open the 30th upscale Reserve Bar

    Starbucks Korea to open the 30th upscale Reserve Bar

    Starbucks Korea says it will expand its premium Reserve store network to meet the growing demand for specialty coffee among local consumers.

    The company will open two Reserve stores in Seoul and a third in Pangyo, just south of the capital, this week. They will raise to 30 the number of upscale Reserve cafes in the country, which is already the third-largest total of any international market, behind China with 52 and the US with 35.

    Starbucks Korea is a joint venture between Starbucks Coffee International and South Korea’s Shinsegae Group.

    The number of Reserve bars in South Korea stood at 15 as of the end of last year, so has nearly doubled in the past six months.

    “We will continue to increase the number of Reserve bars in line with the growing demand for specialty coffee among local consumers,” a Starbucks Korea official said

    Starbucks remains the undisputed No 1 in Korea’s coffee industry and was the first such chain the country to surpass 1 trillion won (US$895 million) in sales. It has more than 1150 stores nationwide.

    The size of South Korea’s domestic coffee market reached 6.4 trillion won at the end of 2016, up 30.6 per cent from 2014, according to government data.

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  • Merchandise from K-pop is popular with Chinese

    Merchandise from K-pop is popular with Chinese

    K-pop merchandise is selling well on e-commerce platform 11st’s global website, boosted by fans from the greater China region, which account for 43 percent of the products’ sales.

    According to figures for the first five months of the year, 43.2 percent of customers for K-pop merchandise online are from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

    A large part of that demand – 30.7 percent – came from Taiwan, which was the No. 1 destination for goods bought on 11st. Japan was second place (10.8 percent), followed by the United States (10.6 percent), China (6.6 percent) and Hong Kong (6.2 percent).

    “Until last year, cosmetics and beauty products were the majority of items bought by foreign customers on our website,” said a spokeswoman for 11st. “But recently revenue from idol-related products, apart from CDs, has started to account for a significant proportion of our sales.”

    The company just started this year to launch promotion and marketing events to sell K-pop merchandise in partnerships with domestic entertainment companies.

    11st sold K-pop merchandise to 60 countries worldwide that included South America, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

    Taiwanese customers had a big preference for merchandise featuring Super Junior, SHINee, TVXQ, Blackpink, iKON and GOT7, while Japanese were keen on merchandise related to Eun Ji-won, a member of Korea’s first-generation idol group SechsKies.

  • Kakao’s technical glitches cause disruptions Monday

    Kakao’s technical glitches cause disruptions Monday

    Korea’s top mobile messenger Kakaotalk resumed normal services after experiencing disruptions around 5 p.m., its operator Kakao said Monday.

    Kakao said the messenger suffered problems for around an hour before being normalized at 5:48 p.m. It claimed there seems to have been some sort of error while the system was being updated.

    Earlier in the day, deliveries of messages on its platform were delayed, and the personal computer version of the program was also not working properly.

    The company said the service is now fully normalized.

    KakaoTalk is the most popular mobile messenger app in Korea, boasting a whopping 40 million users.

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  • Shinsegae wins Incheon duty-free license

    Shinsegae wins Incheon duty-free license

    Shinsegae Duty Free won two licenses to operate at Incheon International Airport’s Terminal 1 on Friday, beating out Shilla Duty Free in the competitive battle for lucrative slots at one of the world’s most trafficked airports.

    The Korea Customs Service said Shinsegae will be allowed to operate stores in the DF1 and DF5 zones of Terminal 1 from next month until July 2023. In total, Shinsegae now occupies four out of eight duty-free zones allocated to major conglomerates. The other four are run by Lotte Duty Free and Shilla Duty Free. Another four are reserved for smaller operators.

    “DF1 and DF5 are significant spots in terms of size and items they’re allowed to sell,” said a spokesman for Incheon International Airport Corporation, which determines what types of products can be sold in each zone. “DF1 is for cosmetics and perfume, while DF5 is for leather accessories and fashion.”

    The two zones combined occupy more than 8,000 square meters (86,000 square feet), nearly half of Terminal 1’s total duty-free space. Lotte Duty Free, the market leader, initially held the fort but decided to give up the license in February after failing to secure lower rent from Incheon International Airport. It later re-entered the bid after the airport offered cheaper rent.

    Combined, DF1 and DF5 stores used to generate 800 to 900 billion won ($720 to 810 million) a year, equivalent to 6 to 7 percent of the Korean duty-free market’s total sales.

    Shinsegae and Shilla were the final competitors among four bidders that submitted applications to Incheon International Airport Corporation last month. Lotte Duty Free and Doosan Duty Free were ruled out in the first round of evaluation.

    The final round pitted two retail giants run by conglomerate family daughters: Chung Yoo-kyung of Shinsegae Department Store and Lee Boo-jin of Hotel Shilla. Chief executives from the two companies – Han In-kyu for Shilla Duty Free and Son Yung-sik for Shinsegae Duty Free – presented their business plans to customs officials at the Customs Border Control Training Institute in Cheonan, South Chungcheong, on Friday. Officials then assigned each plan a grade.

    Industry sources speculate that Shinsegae’s higher bidding price did the work. Among a total of 1,000 points in the customs office’s grading scale, bidding price took up 400 points. Shinsegae offered 337 billion won for the two zones, while Shilla offered 269.8 billion won.

    In the duty-free industry, the bid upended a market long dominated by Lotte and Shilla. Shinsegae is a relative newcomer in the game, entering in 2012 after acquiring the duty-free business of Paradise Hotel.

    As of last year, the market share of the three major operators was 41.9 percent for Lotte, 29.7 percent for Shilla and 12.7 percent for Shinsegae.

    Shinsegae’s bid win on Friday, though, raises its share to 19 percent, while Lotte’s falls to 36 percent because of the lost space at Incheon. Shilla’s share remains unchanged at 29.7 percent.

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