South Korea’s exports in July surged 29.6 percent to $55.4 billion on-year, a record monthly figure since the nation began compiling the data in 1956, according to the Trade Ministry Sunday. In the first seven months of this year, Korea’s accumulated exports were worth $358.7 billion, setting another record. Also, this is the first time in 10 years that the country saw double digit growths for four consecutive months in 10 years -- 41.2 percent in April, 45.6 percent in May, 39.8

Industry Aug. 1, 2021

Electric vehicles are powered by hundreds, even thousands of battery cells. If just one defective cell catches fire, a massive recall will not only cost billions of dollars but also the trust of customers. So how do battery manufacturers sort out the bad apples? “For automakers, the safety of EVs are their key competitiveness, so they require stringent safety standards from their battery suppliers,” said Zin Hwang, chief financial officer at Innometry, a South Korean firm that

Industry Aug. 1, 2021

LG Chem said Thursday it has acquired separator business from LG Electronics for 525 billion won ($458.5 million) to target the fast-growing global electric vehicle battery materials market. According to South Korea’s leading chemical firm, the company took over chemical electronic material business under LG Electronics’ business solutions division. The acquisition includes all tangible and intangible assets of the business including its production facilities and personnel. The

Industry July 29, 2021

Expectations are running high as the release of NCSoft’s Blade & Soul 2 is less than a month away. Set for launch on Aug. 26, the massive multiplayer online role-playing game is the sequel of NCSoft’s Blade & Soul, which notched the grand prize at the 2012 Korea Game Awards. The game will be available on both PC and mobile devices. Users can enjoy Blade & Soul 2 on PC through cross-play service Purple. Preregistrations reached 7.46 million, a record in Korea, break

Industry July 29, 2021

As lithium-ion batteries near their full potential, new challengers are preparing a coup d‘état with their next-generation technologies. If successful, the coup would render conventional lithium-ion batteries obsolete overnight and subvert decades-long industrial order led by Asian battery firms. Are the days of lithium-ion battery manufacturers coming to an end? SolidEnergy Systems, a Singapore-based battery developer, is one of the most threatening contenders, with its lith

Technology July 29, 2021

Hydrogen, the most abundant element on Earth and, as a gas, a dream fuel that emits zero emissions. Almost everyone agrees that a transition to hydrogen economy is a worthy long-term goal -- dramatic reductions of urban air pollution and the buildup of greenhouse gases that aggravate the global climate crisis. But key questions remain unanswered: Who will pump in the billions of dollars of investment needed to mass produce hydrogen, and who will lay the pipelines needed to transport hydroge

Industry July 28, 2021

Plucking batteries from electric vehicles and popping in fresh ones. This idea has existed since at least the late 2000s, but has apparently not been taken seriously by leading players in the sector. In the lens of pessimists, the whiz-bang tech is nothing more than a relic of the early era of electric cars, when it used to take hours to recharge. Now, rapid chargers can juice batteries in less than 30 minutes and evolving technologies will make those times only shorter. Critics dismiss ba

Industry July 27, 2021

AfreecaTV’s operating profit in the second quarter surged 97 percent on-year to 21.5 billion won ($18.6 million), the company announced Monday. The revenue of South Korea’s biggest livestreaming platform jumped 44 percent to 65 billion won while net profit shot up 85 percent to 18.9 billion won buoyed by robust advertising sales. “AfreecaTV Ads Manager, the firm’s newly launched advertising platform, propelled the strong advertisement sales. The beginning of new sea

Industry July 26, 2021

To make inroads into China’s fast growing alternative food market, SK said Monday it has joined Chinese food service company Joyvio Group to form a fund worth 100 billion won ($86.7 million). According to the holding firm of South Korea’s third largest conglomerate SK Group, the envisioned Sustainable Food & Consumption Fund will invest in promising food tech companies that specialize in plant-based meat, fermentation and vertical farming. SK will inject 18 billion won of t

Industry July 26, 2021

South Korea has reactivated three nuclear reactors in the space of a week, as fears of a power supply shortage gripped the nation amid a smothering early-summer heat wave. At 1:10 a.m. on Friday, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power restarted operations of the 700-megawatt Wolsong No.3 nuclear reactor, the third switched on since July 18. It followed Shin Wolsong No. 1 and Shin Kori No.4 which went back online earlier than scheduled amid tight power supplies. All three had been closed for mainte

Industry July 23, 2021

South Korean aerospace and defense firm LIG Nex1 said Friday it had established a committee dedicated to overseeing the company’s operations and initiatives in environmental, social and governance fields. The committee will designate one of the outside directors as the chairman and hold regular semi-annual meetings and occasional meetings to set strategies and policies for the firm’s long-term ESG goals. Since 2009, LIG Nex1 has had a corporate social responsibility task force.

Industry July 23, 2021

Posco chemical’s operating profit in the second quarter jumped a whopping 773.9 percent to 35.6 billion won ($30.9 million) on-year, the company announced Thursday. The refractory and secondary battery materials making unit of South Korean steel giant Posco not only logged record quarterly results in operating profit, but also in revenue, enjoying 480 billion won, a 41.1 percent surge in the same period. Posco Chemical is the country’s only firm that manufactures both cathodes

Industry July 22, 2021

What battery manufacturers want is simple: to make their batteries more powerful. To this end, battery makers are taking various efforts to innovate their recipes, including putting more nickel inside cathodes or silicon in graphite anodes. They also form technological partnerships, and the latest example is the joint venture created by SK Materials and Group14 Technologies. On Monday, SK Materials, SK Group’s industrial gas manufacturing arm, announced its $52 million investment i

Technology July 22, 2021

The next-generation lithium-metal batteries of Singapore-based battery developer SolidEnergy Systems show potential to replacing lithium-ion batteries, but major technological challenges remain for their commercialization, including slow charging time. During an online press conference on Wednesday, SES founder and CEO Dr. Qichao Hu shared the firm’s progress on lithium-metal batteries and compared them with those of its competitors QuantumScape and SolidPower, claiming that SES is 18

Industry July 21, 2021

As the European Union aims to impose a new tax on aviation fuel and require all flights within its borders to use a certain amount of sustainable aviation fuels, or SAFs, major South Korean refineries are watching closely whether the initiatives will jump-start a new market for green jet fuels. According to a climate package announced by EU last week, free emitting permits for air carriers will disappear after 2026 and a tax on kerosene -- the most common jet fuel -- will be gradually introd

Industry July 20, 2021