Korea

Zanna Romanenko, 33, left Ukraine and came to Korea last October. [ZANNA ROMANENKO] Refugees from Ukraine who came to Korea shared their struggles of living in Korea after fleeing their home country. “We need help,” 33-year-old Zanna Romaneko from Ukraine told the JoongAng Ilbo at a church in Ansan, Gyeonggi. Romaneko used to live with her husband raising their children together at Ukraine before the war broke. Now she is living in a faraway country as an evacuee. Her husband had to stay in Ukraine to fight the war, while she is about to give birth to their second child here. Romaneko left Ukraine in October last year with her eight-year-old son and parent-in-law, passing into Romania. Thanks to her husband who is a Koryoin, an ethnic Korean from the former Soviet Union, she was able to get on a flight headed to Korea and find a place to live in Ansan. After landing Korea with a short-term visiting visa, she was granted the right to seek limited employment despite … [Read more...] about Refugees from Ukraine face struggles in Korea

(CTN NEWS) – SEOUL – In the contest to lead the party through next year’s general elections, Reps. Kim Gi-hyeon and Ahn Cheol-soo are the two leading candidates. And candidate registration for the leadership election of the ruling PPP commenced on Thursday. The Yoon Suk Yeol administration keeps a tight eye on the race because it wants a Yoon supporter to steer the party through the parliamentary elections. That will determine if Yoon can advance his program in the National Assembly for the remaining five years of his tenure, until 2027. It is widely assumed that Yoon’s office is supporting Kim. Kim Gi-hyeon (R) and Ahn Cheol-soo, lawmakers of the ruling People Power Party who have expressed their intention to run in the party’s leadership race in March, attend a New Year’s meeting of the party’s chapter in Incheon, west of Seoul, on Jan. 11, 2023. (Yonhap) Kim previously held the lead in the race, but current surveys indicate that Ahn has … [Read more...] about Registration For PPP Leadership Races Opens In South Korea

[FSC] Tokenizing ownership of a company or an asset — as with fractional investment — may soon be possible in Korea, according to a proposal by a financial regulator on Sunday. A security token is a relatively new type of investment asset based on distributed ledger technology and owned or traded in the same way as a stock or a bond. Although security tokens are similar to electronic securities in the way that the transactions are digitalized, they are distinguishable because they use decentralized distributed ledger technology instead of a centralized register at a financial institution. The change will allow investors to more easily buy real estate, art, music copyrights and other intellectual properties (IP) in fractional units. A bill to amend the Act on Electronic Registration of Stocks and Bonds and Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act will be submitted by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) in the first half of the year. The National Assembly will … [Read more...] about Security token bill to be submitted by Korea’s FSC

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The news is full of seemingly disparate themes that urgently need connecting. The first is the nerdy macro-economics of demographics. China is shrinking for the first time in 60 years. South Korea’s birthrate is plummeting towards levels never seen before while that of the US is at a hundred-year low. The second strand is the toxic masculinity seeping across the planet, from the Tates and the Trumps, to the beleaguered backlash from women-repressing regimes in Iran and Afghanistan , and the general rise of gender-based violence across the world. The third is the crescendo of mental health and loneliness among the young . What’s the connection between demographics, toxic masculinity and epidemic levels of loneliness? Women. The link between the three is the rising independence of women -personally, professionally and politically - and the lack of a parallel rise in inspiring leaders and pathways for young men. If we … [Read more...] about The Tragic Disconnect Between Men And Women – No Sex, No Babies, Lots Of Loneliness, Shrinking Populations

SM Entertainment co-CEOs Lee Sung-soo, left, and Tak Young-joon [SM ENTERTAINMENT] SM Entertainment will start a multi-label system for the first time in its 28-year history, vowing to remove its dependence on founder Lee Soo-man as chief music producer and roll out two new groups each year. “We have realized the limits to producing and managing the intellectual property [IP] that meets the demands of the market and fans,” said co-CEO Lee Sung-su in a video uploaded on the K-pop agency’s YouTube channel on Friday. “The biggest changes that will come with the new system is the establishment of multi-production centers, multi labels and a subsidiary specializing in publishing music.” In the video presentation, CEO Lee introduced the changes as the third phase of SM Entertainment, or “SM 3.0.” SM 1.0 was the years between 1995 and 2010 when the first batch of major artists debuted and SM 2.0 from 2010 to 2022 when K-pop started accelerating its influence outside of Korea. SM … [Read more...] about SM Entertainment to establish its first multi-label system

Visitors pose for a selfie at The Hyundai Store in western Seoul on Jan. 17. [CHOI YOUNG-JAE] The Hyundai Seoul, located near Yeouido Station in the western part of the capital, is being transformed into a playground for millennials and Gen Z — or so it seems. After opening in February 2021, the department store's sales jumped by 43.3 percent in 2022 compared to the year before, according to local reports. Daejeon Shinsegae Art & Science reportedly witnessed the highest sales jump among local department stores last year at 159.4 percent, with sales of 864.676 billion won ($73.56 million), followed by Lotte Department Store's Dongtan branch jumping 90 percent to 447.5 billion won. The Hyundai Seoul ranked third, with sales of 950.93 billion won. Yet the success of The Hyundai Seoul's opening was met with skepticism as its location was a ways away from the main office district of Yeouido. It also does not have the three major designer brands — Hermes, Louis Vuitton and … [Read more...] about The Hyundai Seoul targets the young and trendy as a picture playground

The 40th YongPyong International Ski Festival held at YongPyong Resort in Daegwallyeong, Gangwon, from Friday to Sunday [YONGPYONG RESORT] The 40th YongPyong International Ski Festival held at YongPyong Resort in Daegwallyeong, Gangwon, from Friday to Sunday [YONGPYONG RESORT] The 40th YongPyong International Ski Festival was held from Friday to Sunday at the YongPyong Resort in Daegwallyeong, Gangwon, with some 350 foreign residents from 20 countries living in Korea taking part in the three-day festivity. The ski competition, held for foreigners to make friends while enjoying a day at Korea's oldest ski resort, was held for the 40th year since 1983. Ambassadors from Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Austria and the United States took part this year. "This year marks the 50th year since YongPyong resort has been built," said Shin Dal-soon, CEO of YongPyong Resort. "We will endeavor to make YongPyong Resort an attractive tourist spot for both Koreans and … [Read more...] about Skiing and socializing

Yim Jong-ryong Woori Financial Group nominated Yim Jong-ryong, a former Financial Services Commission chairman, as its new chairman Friday, as the nomination committee favored the candidate with public service experience over chief competitor Lee Won-deok, CEO at Woori Bank. The nomination committee will recommend Yim to the board, and the new chairman’s three-year term will formally begin after the decision is approved in an annual general meeting on March 24. The new chairman has the burden of addressing a wide range of problems stemming from poor internal control. The affiliates of the financial group failed to detect 69.7 billion won of misappropriation and the negligent sale of high-risk investment fund products linked with Lime Asset Management. “To overhaul the organization, we concluded that the appointment should bring someone who can assess and reform the organization with an objective viewpoint,” Woori Financial Group said in a statement. Yim is expected to draw … [Read more...] about Former FSC chief dubbed new Woori Financial chair

Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon speaks during a press conference. [NAVER] Naver will launch its own version of ChatGPT in the Korean market in the first half of this year to respond to the widely popular chatbot system, the company announced Friday. The announcement follows weaker-than-expected financial results for 2022. Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon said during a conference call that the operator of the country’s largest search portal will introduce its “SearchGPT” that specializes in queries in Korean. “We will respond to the new trend of generative AI,” Choi said, “We will solve the weaknesses of ChatGPT such as its low reliability, shortage of up-to-date information and lower accuracy when translating from English into Korean,” Choi said. Short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, ChatGPT is a free chatbot system capable of generating conversational dialogue and human-like text such as articles and summaries. Developed by OpenAI, a San Francisco, California-based company, … [Read more...] about Naver to launch competitor to ChatGPT

(CTN NEWS) – BEIJING – According to official media on Thursday, China , the third nation after the Soviet Union and the United States to launch a man into space, will construct base stations in Antarctica to support its network of ocean monitoring satellites. Some countries are worried that China’s extensive network of ground stations, which it needs to support an increasing number of satellites and its aspirations for space travel, could be used for spying. China, however, dismisses these claims. Due to “trends” in geopolitics, Sweden’s state-owned space corporation rejected to extend contracts with China or take new Chinese business in 2020. Sweden had previously provided ground stations that assisted Chinese spacecraft in flying and send data. Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China’s space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, … [Read more...] about China Plans To Build Ground Stations For Satellites In Antarctica