Korean Air Lines’ newest aircraft will offer passengers a luxury in-flight experience on medium-to-long distance flights beginning April 2, according to the flagship carrier.The new plane is an Airbus A330-300, which seats 272 passengers. It is highly fuel-efficient and can fly up to 11 hours covering 9,450 km. According to Airbus’ website, it also has the quietest cabin among twin-engine planes operating today. Korean Air has fitted the plane out with its luxury Prestige Suites to make it more

Industry March 29, 2015

Busan Bank will focus on expanding non-face-to-face transaction channels and smart finance strategies, bank officials said Thursday.The bank said the efforts were part of a bid to gain competitiveness in the emerging fintech era. Fintech, a relatively new term combining finance and technology, broadly refers to technology and software that is used to facilitate financial analysis and transactions.The bank is currently working on creating mobile-based bankbooks, a credit card transaction system b

Industry March 26, 2015

Korea’s 30 largest conglomerates acquired 203 companies at a total price surpassing 29 trillion won ($26.3 billion) in the past five years, according to data compiled on mergers and acquisitions released Wednesday. CJ Group led the pack in the number of deals with 36 acquisitions while Hyundai Motor Group topped spending on M&As, tallying nearly 5.2 trillion won, the business performance analysis site CEO Score said.The most expensive acquisition by far was Hyundai Engineering and Construction,

Industry March 25, 2015

Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Changwon City in South Gyeongsang Province announced Tuesday that they signed a memorandum of understanding to share and transfer patented technology.The MOU was a follow-up measure to a visit by DSME to Changwon in January at the request of Changwon’s Future Strategy Committee, when the two parties first agreed on a transfer of technology regarding liquefied natural gas-fueled ships, or LFS.DSME will transfer technology to shipbuilding material sup

Industry March 25, 2015

Lotte Department Store soared past the other big five local department stores in sales reported on Monday, while Galleria Department Store gave up its fourth-place slot to AK Plaza.Lotte reported sales of 14.2 trillion won ($12.8 billion) last year, followed by Hyundai Department Store with 6.98 trillion won ($6.3 billion) and Shinsegae Department Store with 6.3 trillion won ($5.7 billion).AK Plaza unseated Galleria Department Store for fourth place with 2.15 trillion won ($1.94 billion) in sale

Industry March 24, 2015

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has stressed the importance of seizing opportunities offered by partnerships such as the Korea-New Zealand free trade agreement.“History has shown us that New Zealand’s FTAs are successful,” he said during a speech at a breakfast forum hosted by the New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Korea at a Seoul hotel.  Commenting on the benefits of the new deal, he particularly emphasized the need for integration with Asian markets such as that of South Korea, saying “It

March 24, 2015

Koreans consumed the most noodles per person in 2014, according to a report released by Bloomberg Intelligence and market research firm Euromonitor on Sunday.The report showed that the average Korean consumed 9.73 kilograms of noodles in 2014, up 0.8 percent from 2013. Japan was a close second with 9.63 kg, followed by Indonesia (5.8 kg), China (5.0 kg) and Vietnam (4.7 kg).The top 10 countries with the highest noodle consumption were all in Asia.Eight of the 10 countries showed an increase in n

Industry March 23, 2015

Organica Day, the beverage arm of natural food label Organica, has completed the construction of Asia’s first production center exclusively dedicated to detox juice on Monday, according to the company.Organica is a local brand that first introduced juice cleanse to the Korean market in 2012. Known as the Just Juice Production Center, the two-building facility in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, has the ability to extract, sterilize, pack and ship up to 5,000 bottles of detox juice each day. The HACCP-ce

Industry March 22, 2015

It may come as a surprise how many young people in Korea know their way around a power drill. One example is Kim Ji-eun, a 33-year-old woman who was carefully drilling a small oval into a rectangular piece of wood at Intro M Wood Shop in Dobong-gu, Seoul. “I’m making a cellphone dock. The hole is for the charger,” she explained as she flipped the switch to get the drill going again. As she blew the wood shavings off the finished block, she said she had been coming here for about a year. At Intro

Arts & Design March 20, 2015

March 20, 2015