Health authorities started the last stage of testing for SK Bioscience’s coronavirus vaccine GBP510 this week, the National Institute of Health said Tuesday. As a home-grown COVID-19 vaccine closest to becoming the country’s first vaccine to be authorized, GBP510 is currently in the third and last phase of its clinical trial. “The last and most important step for the commercialization of the first Korea-made COVID-19 vaccine has begun,” said Kwon Jun-wook, director of

Industry Dec. 21, 2021

Concerns reignited among iPhone 13 users subscribed to telecoms service provider LG Uplus on Thursday as they were still unable to receive calls or had calls disconnected despite the latest but a belated software update. Angry customers blamed Apple on online communities for posting a notice about its latest software update -- the iOS 15.2 -- more than a month after they demanded fixing the problem. Both the manufacturer and the mobile carrier have also been silent over the defects for over a m

Industry Dec. 16, 2021

Baedal Minjok, also known as Baemin, began mobilizing robots for a door-to-door food delivery service, South Korea’s largest food delivery app said Wednesday. Named “Delidrive,” Baemin’s autonomous driving robot is the first of its kind in the world, according to the app operator Woowa Brothers. The robot delivery service is currently only available in the apartment complex of Alleyway Gwanggyo near Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. The company said Delidrive can freely move

Industry Dec. 15, 2021

Dunamu, the operator of Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, aims to become a global platform for all types of exchanges, its chief said Tuesday. “In the future, Dunamu will establish a trading channel for all digital assets to discover new opportunities such as metaverses and non-fungible tokens,” said Dunamu CEO Lee Sirgoo in an online press conference held on its recently-launched metaverse platform 2ndblock. “Taking a step further from being a platform f

Industry Dec. 14, 2021

Samsung Biologics will begin manufacturing AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 antibody combination Evusheld by expanding their earlier deal, officials said Tuesday. The newly expanded deal is estimated at $380 million, up about $50 million from the initial contract of the two pharmaceutical giants’ long-term strategic partnership signed in September 2020. Evusheld, formerly known as AZD7442, is a combination of two long-acting antibodies, tixagevimab and cilgavimab. It has the effect of prev

Industry Dec. 14, 2021

Global K-pop stars BTS and Netflix hit series Squid Game were among the most popular hashtags across the world on Instagram this year, Instagram Korea said Tuesday. “Popular contents and accounts on Instagram in 2021 reflected the most notable social and cultural phenomena of this year, such as the dance craze, K-content syndrome, and the Tokyo Olympics,“ Meta Korea’s CEO Jung Ki-hyun said in an online press conference. “Instagram will continue to allow the users to fr

Culture Dec. 14, 2021

An increasing number of public officials are leaving to join the cryptocurrency industry almost without restriction, Rep. Roh Woong-rae of the ruling Democratic Party said Saturday, urging tighter rules on their post-public service employment. According to data compiled by the lawmaker, a Grade 5 official at the Financial Service Commission, the nation’s top financial regulator, recently quit to move to Bithumb, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges here. Although the official fac

Social Affairs Dec. 12, 2021

South Korean megahit “Squid Game” ranked as the No. 9 most-searched keyword by worldwide users on Google this year, Google Korea said Thursday. No. 1 on the list of most searched terms was “Australia vs. India,” referring to cricket matches between the two countries. “India vs. England” took second, followed by “IPL,” which stands for the Indian Premier League. Among the TV shows searched on Google worldwide, the Korean drama series was the mos

Technology Dec. 9, 2021

Kyobo Life Insurance affiliates and KakaoBank signed a memorandum of understanding on data cooperation and financial platform projects, officials said Thursday. KakaoBank, South Korea’s biggest internet-only bank by user base, said it will work with Kyobo Book Centre, the country’s largest bookstore by sales, to develop and upgrade an alternative credit rating model. To do that, the lender plans to research and analyze nonfinancial data such as the history of book purchases by Kyob

Industry Dec. 9, 2021

In times of digital transformation, bigger firms have the tools, technology and personnel for digital transformation, but smaller companies often lack the necessary resources. This is where the Seoul Business Agency steps in to support small- to medium-sized companies in the capital. "Conglomerates or IT companies are undergoing digital transformation and making business opportunities out of it. SMEs are aware of the shift, but they are very busy with their daily workload," said Kim H

Industry Dec. 8, 2021

Led by major biopharmaceutical companies in Celltrion and Samsung Biologics, South Korea is poised to make a bigger impact on the global market, according to German science and technology group Merck. “Executives at Merck headquarters think the Korean government’s vision to turn the country into a global vaccine hub by 2025 is impressive. There were suggestions to actively cooperate with the Korean government and support its strategic efforts to foster the bio industry,” said

Industry Dec. 7, 2021

Trade Week 2021 -- the Seoul Business Agency’s global trade conference, established to offer export opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises in Seoul -- began its four-day run Tuesday. The SBA, a city-run agency that supports SMEs in the capital, said a total of 300 companies will participate in more than 1,200 online export consultations with 500 foreign buyers from more than 20 countries. The participating companies work mainly in the categories of beauty, lifestyle, food,

Industry Dec. 7, 2021

Metaverse, a shared virtual world where people can interact with others through avatars, has been the talk of the town in the second half of this year. While some doubt metaverse will be able to take off or see it as just another marketing strategy, others seem to believe it is the next giant leap in information technology. Regardless of the perceptual divide, Kim Beom-joo, head of evangelism at graphics developer Unity Korea, says the coming of the virtual platform was inevitable and its ar

Technology Dec. 6, 2021

Kyobo Life Insurance, one of Korea’s biggest life insurers, has picked up speed in its digital transformation efforts this year by innovating its traditional businesses and securing future growth engines. According to Kyobo Life Insurance, the company reorganized its structure with a digital transformation, opening departments on digital strategy, digital new businesses and IT support. The life insurer also implemented Amazon’s Public Cloud services in order to cope with the para

Market Dec. 6, 2021

Amid worries over the omicron variant of COVID-19, Korean testing kit makers showed confidence in their equipment’s ability to detect the new virus variant, pushing up their stock prices again. GreenCross Medical Science said Friday that the effectiveness of its COVID-19 testing kit has been confirmed for the new omicron variant as well. In order to assess the validity of the result from its testing equipment, GCMS conducted the ‘in-silico’ experiment, which refers to a typ

Industry Dec. 3, 2021