The creator of “Between”, VCNC (CEO: Jaewook Park) recently received a whopping 3 billion KRW (approx. 3 million USD) investment from four investors.

Qualcomm will be investing $23 million in Pantech, the company ranked 3rd in the mobile industry in South Korea. Who is Pantech? Will there be a shift in dynamics? Will there be significant changes made in the industry? Why is Kanye West relevant in all this? beSUCCESS answers these questions.

beSUCCESS covers weekly news in Korea, 23 Jan.

The A-list. The star-studded lineup. The white list. The list of Korean people you should meet if you want to do business in Korea. [Investors] K Cube Ventures : CEO- Jimmy Rim. Successfully invested in 9 different startups. One of the hottest firms in the community. It kicked off in 2012, and are focusing on early-stage companies (inc. startups) in mobile and IT. Their investments range from KRW 0.1 billion to KRW…

Kakao’s effort to lessen the effect of these ‘spam’ invites should be welcomed by mobile game developers. Users’ experiences with games naturally lead to an understanding and ‘feel’ of the platform that provides it. If Kakao wants to expand further, they will need to optimize their user experience as much as they can.

Kakao, the South Korean IM giant sought to partner up with American corporations such as Google and Facebook to name a few as a way to reach US smartphone users. They also successfully raised 92 billion KRW from the Chinese internet gaming company, Tencent (72 million) and a Korean company, WeMade Entertainment (20 million). Kakao will also consider an initial public offering (IPO) starting this year.

beSUCCESS covers weekly news in Korea, 14 Jan.

WeMadeEntertainment, the maker of AniPang (one of the most played online games in Korea) announced yesterday that they will be boycotting G-Star 2013, the global gaming expo in Korea. With the opposition to the bill gaining a lot of support from the gaming and IT industry, it will be interesting to see how events unfold. beSUCCESS investigates the Shutdown Law and the recently passed bill that suggests a 1% collection of annual income from gaming companies.

It’s no news that LG Display competes with Samsung for the title of the world’s largest LCD maker. At the same time, LG is also seeking to expand its manufacturing lines to meet heavy demands for their tablets and smartphones. Meanwhile, Samsung will invest more in the home appliance industry such as fridges and robot vacuum cleaners. This can be seen as their attempt at strengthening their home appliances portfolio that is considerably weak compared to LG’s.

In the recent International Consumer Electronics Show (ICES) that was held this Monday, LG expressed their interest in business alliance, namely, a “Smart TV Alliance” by securing new partners. Smart TV Alliance is an industry body complete with involvements from LG Electronics, Philips, Qualcomm, and Toshiba just to name a few.

beSUCCESS investigates how LG will spend its 19 billion USD investment.

beSUCCESS covers weekly news in Korea, 9 Jan.

In November 2012, 55% of the companies that have not used a cloud service said that they plan to use it within 18 months. Desktop virtualization has been the number 1 interest of Korean companies for 2 consecutive years. Which tells us that there will be a definite expansion of cloud services within the Korean companies this year. Although the figures seem meek compared to 79% (Australian companies seem to be very enthusiastic), this could mean more potential for Korea, as we will be able to see that such virtual environments globally sued and acknowledged.

Several big names have exited Korea in the last few years (CarreFour, Walmart, Motorola, RIM, HTC, Goldman Sachs, to mention a few), but can Korean consumers be blamed for the failure of foreign companies to attract and retain market share, as some have suggested?

What are the key words for IT Korea 2013? What are some of the key words for the IT market in Korea for this year? According to Gartner, and The National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), the 10 key words for 2013 are: The beSUCCESS team thinks that mobile platform wars, enterprise app stores, cloud computing, and intellectual property rights are the main key words in 2013. beSUCCESS will be writing more…

With the year 2012 behind us, beSUCCESS analyses 4 hottest issues in Korea for the first week of 2013. Censorship in SNS services The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (yes, such a ministry does exist in Korea)  passed a new bill that protects youths from cyber bullying. They passed a bill that disables them from using swear words of slang on their KakaoTalk and other SNS services. Due to the demand that…

With ‘Gangnam Style’ ranked #1 search term across 5+ countries (you might be surprised to find your country name in there!), Korea continues to amaze the world. beSUCCESS investigates and analyzed the hottest trends in Korea, 2012.

In early December, the major Korean telcos launched Joyn, a mobile messenger service which would allow subscribers to message, call and send files to other users. This could enhance the market entry cost greatly and make it difficult for small IT startups in Korea.

Currently, Samsung Electronics is investing huge amounts of resources for the TIZEN expansion across the world. Already, the mobile OS ‘BADA’ platform is being synchronized to the TIZEN format, and considering the experience with BADA smartphones, selling around 20 million worldwide, it seems that Samsung’s decision will allow Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone series to be increasingly independent by decreasing the dependence on Google and others.

South Korean entrepreneurs are holding their breath, as the country issues in a new era, having voted in its first female leader in history. Park Geun Hye (60), whose childhood was spent in the presidential palace, is the daughter of assassinated dictator (1979) Park Chung Hee, whose autocratic 18 year rule, tough economic policies and questionable human rights record cast a shadow over her candidacy. Yet, there are signs that she is…