Korean News
Five Essential News Bites From The Korean Startup Scene This Week
2013년 10월 02일

K-Cube Ventures invests $500M won in Mobile Beauty Content Company “Seed Paper” Seed paper shares practical beauty tips for its users through its mobile lifestyle content platform. The service is linked KakaoTalk Plus Friend, which is a premium service from Korea’s top mobile messaging platform, KakaoTalk. Well-known experts in the field of beauty and cosmetics, including Hong Cha, Saem-Mul Jung, and Hyun-Cheung Woo, provide practical tips through the service, which includes tips…

4 Working Hours Per Day, In The Name Of Innovation: New Samsung Work Policy
2013년 10월 01일

Samsung is clearly taking its drive for innovation seriously, in order to compete with the likes of Apple and to cement its position as global tech / electronics leader. After spending $1Bn on a new innovation center in Silicon Valley, the tech giant is now set to introduce a radical new work policy in Korea, to spur creative thinking. Samsung will adopt a four-hour flexible working system company-wide on the condition that…

Korea’s Power As A Global Leader In The Display Market Remains Undiminished
2013년 10월 01일

  For a number of years Korea has been firmly established as a global production base for core display materials. This is partly due to intense competition in the industry between the two domestic heavyweights LG and Samsung. Chinese display makers are making aggressive investments in the sector, but investments in the materials and components for next-generation display are still concentrated in Korea, and China has some way to catch up the…

Korean Tech Giant, Samsung, Settles Patent Disput With Little Brother, LG
2013년 09월 30일

LG Display and Samsung Display Co. have settled their longstanding quarrel over their display technology as the world’s two biggest display makers face growing competition from Chinese rivals and an industry slump, industry sources have claimed. LG Display and Samsung Display have been locked in a legal battle over organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology following probes into an alleged technology leak from Samsung Display to LG Display last…

Korean Tech Giant NHN To Establish $45M Fund To Support Venture Startups
2013년 08월 05일

NHN will invest a total of 100 billion won ($90 million) to launch a mutual growth fund that will help smaller local content providers and establish a sounder cyber ecosystem, the company said Monday. It is part of the firm’s set of measures introduced to ensure mutual growth with small IT firms and venture startups. Under the plan, the operator of the nation’s dominant Web portal Naver will spend 50 billion won…

South Korea’s Biggest Telco SK Launches Accelerator for Early Stage Startups
  ·  2013년 07월 23일

SK Planet, part of South Korea’s biggest mobile operator SK Telecom announced the launch of its accelerator program ‘101 Startup Korea’ for early stage startups yesterday. The application period will last until August 16, followed by application screening and an interview round. Once the final participants are selected, the incubation program will start on September 2 and will continue until February 28, 2014. SK Planet, established in October 2011 as a wholly owned subsidiary of…

What’s Up In Korea This Week? [Jul 16.]
  ·  2013년 07월 16일

Cyberattacks in Korea getting worse – a total of 67 targets came under attack A total of 67 targets including public offices and companies came under cyber attacks since June 25, said the Korean government on Thursday. The types of attacks are usually DDoS (distributed denial of service) and malicious codes that destruct hard disk drives. In total (so far!), 14 organizations lost their stored data on hard disks due to the…

On Current Cybersecurity Issues In Korea
  ·  2013년 07월 15일

Cybersecurity is one of the ‘hot issues’ and arguably one of the top priorities for the Korean financial industry. SMEs According to Judd Gregg, the CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the global trend for the past few years was the “increasing number of cyberattacks on smaller financial institutions and businesses [that do not have the defence resources of larger companies]”. Larger Companies Hackers are adapting and are becoming…

Analysis Of The LTE Revolution In Korea
  ·  2013년 06월 26일

Around 10 years ago, ITU said that “There are few recommendations that one can offer a country as advanced in ICT as Korea. Broadband penetration is the world’s highest.” –  and that still holds true today in 2013. 1. The Korean Telecom Market  South Korea has a driven telecom market dynamics. It has one of the fastest growth in smartphone numbers with around a 23 million increase in the span of 2…

What’s Up In Korea This Week? [20. Jun]
  ·  2013년 06월 20일

Samsung Galaxy S4 Understands Korean Dialects?!  Samsung Galaxy S4 ‘s ‘S Voice Engine’, ‘S Translator’ and ‘S Voice Drive’ now allows for a more correct translation of Korean dialects. The South Korean conglomerate have been collecting data about different dialects around Korea (and mind you, they are remarkably different from standard Korean). Samsung Electronics have been continuously making developments in the voice technology area. S4 had a ‘non-touch’ concept that allows you…

Zuckerberg In Korea: Face-to-face Meetings With Samsung And President Park
  ·  2013년 06월 19일

Zuckerberg (center) walks into Samsung Electronics’ building to meet with executives of the Korean tech giant. Samsung We wrote earlier that the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg will be in Korea (read the article here). The meeting with the Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics, Lee Jae-yong was one of the key points in Zuckerberg’s short itinerary in Korea. It was speculated that he will be visiting President Park Geun-Hye – but he had also…

The Rise Of Collaborative Consumptions And Korea
  ·  2013년 06월 17일

Business is a zero-sum game. Collaboration is a plus-sum game. Everyone seems to be talking about “The Sharing Economy” – everybody literally gets a share of your meal, and vice versa. Take the Korean startup, Zipbob. So: Forget zero-sum games; people are all about “collaborative consumption” now. And the people in Asia, especially Korea, are rising up. Wait. Collaborative consumption? Short answer: commercial arrangements and transactions in which participants share and access…

Kakao, Government, Startups: What Will 2013 Have In Store For Korea?
  ·  2013년 06월 13일

We wrote previously about the current situation in the South Korean startup ecosystem. We said that the global startup capital is declining whereas the Korean venture world is seeing more fundings, more startups, and more enthusiasm. The rise of startups in Korea really started with KakaoTalk i n 2010, and since then we have seen $191 million US dollars raised in Korea (in 2013, up from $189 mil in 2012), and increase…

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg To Visit Korea At The End Of June. What Are Its Implications?
  ·  2013년 06월 12일

Facebook’s Co-Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg will visit Korea at the end of this month, according to Yonhap News. Seeing that Bill Gates and Larry Page visited Korea recently, it seems likely that Zuckerberg, too, will discuss the future of IT with the Park administration. People are speculating that he will visit Cheongwadae (the presidential residence in Korea, or the ‘blue house’) at the end of June. He will be spending about…

Korea And The Internet Of Things
  ·  2013년 06월 10일

Good thing the Koreans went for the fiber early. South Korea dominates the top lists when it comes to broadband, according to latest edition of Akamai’s State of the Internet report for the three months ending December 31, 2012. The quarterly State of the Internet report puts the South Korean city of Daegu at the top of the 100 fastest cities. Here are some highlights from Akamai’s official press release: Global On…

Interview With Seojoon Kim, Vice President Of KnowRe
  ·  2013년 06월 05일

Earlier today we talked about the rise of Korean startups… and what’s a better example than KnowRe? KnowRe is the recent Winner of Gap App Challenge (1st Place) 2013, Grand Prize Winner at Global K-Startup 2012, and Winner of Plug and Play Tech Center at beLAUNCH 2012? In much excitement, we interviewed the Co-Founder and Vice-President of KnowRe, Seojoon (Simon) Kim who was incredibly humble about this accomplishment. You can read our…

Korea’s Startup Scene Still Growing Fast
  ·  2013년 06월 05일

Korea is still seeing some immense growth. According to the Korean Venture Capital Association, venture capital firms in Korea raised $191 million in the first quarter this year, up slightly from $189  million in 2012. Interestingly, there is a general slowdown in the U.S. startup scene – U.S. venture capital firms raised $4.1 billion from 35 funds during the first quarter of this year according to the National Venture Capital Association (this is about a 34%…

‘Latte Series’ with 10 Million Downloads Is Going Global!
2013년 05월 13일

LatteScreen’s Grand Global Launch in 14 Countries LatteScreen Launches in 14 Countries Across Asia, Europe and North America: The First Incentivizing Mobile Advertising Platform on Smartphone Lock Screen. Jeong Soohwan, CEO of AppDisco (http://eng.adlatte.com/), the market leader in reward-based mobile advertising scene, announces the launch of LatteScreen in 12 countries in addition to its current operations in Korea and Japan. On May 13th, the product will be released in six countries including…

On the history of Kakao
2013년 04월 06일

What is KakaoTalk?