Category: Korea-Business

It seems that McDonald’s workers in South Korea are also motivated to get themselves replaced by machines:

The leader of protests against McDonald’s “culture of exploitation” of young part-time workers vowed Monday to continue fighting until the firm corrects its practices.

“If the company doesn’t respond to our demands, we will continue to raise our voice on the streets,” Lee Hae-jung, secretary general of the Arbeit Workers Union (AWU), told The Korea Times. “After our protest on Friday, we are waiting for a response from McDonald’s. Another protest will be held.”

A group of part-time workers occupied a McDonald’s outlet in Shinchon, near Yonsei University, Saturday, to demand “higher wages, fair working conditions and union activities within the company.”

“We have received many favorable reactions since then, especially from those who work at other fast-food restaurants,” Lee said. “Many showed empathy when we said it is unfair that most of employees at one of the world’s biggest companies eke out a living on minimum wage.”  [Korea Times]

In response, McDonald’s said it did not break any laws in hiring and managing its employees.

“What the union is saying is a complete distortion. McDonald’s clearly abides by the Labor Law,” the company said.

In December, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board’s Office of the General Counsel also filed complaints against McDonald’s, accusing it of labor violations.

Complaints were filed in 78 cases, claiming that McDonald’s workers in the U.S. were fired or intimidated for participating in union organizing and in a national protest movement calling for higher wages.

Most McDonald’s workers in Korea earn a minimum hourly wage of 5,580 won ($5.10). Meanwhile, the company had a profit of $5.5 billion on sales of $27.5 billion in 2012.

The AWU wants a wage increase to 10,000 won an hour.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I have already seen some restaurants experimenting with touch screen ordering.  How hard would it be for McDonald’s to put up touch screens for customers to order from and then a worker brings the food out to them?

Indictments have now been released for Homeplus executives involved in the customer data selling scandal:

Homeplus Co., the South Korean unit of British retail giant Tesco PLC, has been indicted on charges of illegally selling customer data to insurance firms in exchange for money, a government investigation team said Sunday.

Homeplus is accused of gathering more than 24 million pieces of customer data, including birth dates, number of children and other personal information, and selling them to a number of insurance firms for a total of 23.17 billion won (US$21.14 million), the investigation team said. Most of the information were collected under the guise of conducting a lottery for free gifts.

Homeplus chief Do Sung-hwan, five other former and current company executives and staff, and two officials from the insurance companies have also been indicted over their involvement in the case, according to the team.

Do and the other Homeplus staff are accused of requiring customers to submit personal information in order to enter draws for the gifts.

Most customers who entered the draws were unaware that their personal information would be sold to insurance companies as such details were provided in barely visible print on the coupons. Some of the customers were not even contacted upon winning a prize, the investigation team said.  [Yonhap]

Isn’t this though pretty much what Facebook does every day?

Here is an interesting article from Bloomberg that explains why the Korean media does not actively investigate chaebol and when major incidents do happen they are quick to forget about them:

It’s the rare scandal that links air rage, corruption and the fate of the world’s 14th biggest economy. The Cho Hyun-ah kerfuffle dominating South Korean news media offers all this and perhaps more: a chance to right a political system that’s veered off course.

The news media pounced on the delicious tale of Cho’s freakout, on a Dec. 5 New York-to-Seoul flight, over the manner in which she was served her macadamia nuts. Cho figured her status as daughter of Korean Air’s chairman entitled her to demand that Flight 86 return to the gate to toss off a crew member who didn’t pay her sufficient homage. The 40-year-old has since been indicted for obstructing aviation safety (she’s also being investigated for colluding with transportation officials).

News commentators are now slamming the sense of privilege felt by families running Korea’s corporate giants, or chaebol. Indeed, Cho’s tantrum demonstrated, in a nutshell, how nepotism and clubby ties between government and industry hold back the economy.

But why did it take Cho’s nut-rage to get reporters on the case? Something similar happened last April with the sinking of the Sewol, in which more than 300 people (most of them school kids) died. The ferry was operated by chaebol Chonghaejin Marine, a fact that was harnessed to explore how cronyism and the revolving-door between regulators, bureaucrats and the private sector put lives at risk. This fit a disturbing pattern. When a spectacular incident makes global headlines, journalists feel compelled to investigate Korea’s chaebol problem. When the dust settles, they move on. Rather than respond only to periodic public outrage, journalists should keep a steady watch on the issue.

Two years ago, Park Geun-hye rode a wave of discontent into South Korea’s presidential Blue House. Many blame the widening gap between rich and poor on the dominance of the chaebol, with their unseemly penchant for tax-evasion, sibling battles over assets and extreme concentration of national wealth. Just five companies generate roughly two-thirds of South Korea’s gross domestic product. This outsized influence stifles small-and- medium-size companies. It kills any chance a startup might have to introduce game-changing products and create new jobs. Park’s plan to rein in the chaebol is off to a slow start, and media elites share in the blame.

The chaebol are major advertisers with deep pockets and, like Japan’s vast power industry or America’s military- industrial complex, they are adept at using their brawn to muzzle criticism. In his explosive 2010 book “Think Samsung,” that company’s former in-house counsel Kim Yong-chul detailed how family-owned conglomerates allegedly used bribes and intimidation to “lord over” the government and the media. Kim says that when he first approached local news outlets with the story, he found no takers. [Bloomberg]

You can read the rest at the link, but I think with the rise of alternative media it is getting harder for the chaebol to cover up their transgressions.  With that said I would be surprised to see anything change anytime soon.

It looks like Google is serious about pushing for a near term release of their self driving car technology.  I can see this probably being a custom option available to customers just like Ford currently has the automatic parking feature in some of their vehicles:

LG Electronics Inc. said Thursday it will supply battery packs to the self-driving cars to be launched by U.S. Google Inc. a move that wil certainly help South Korea’s No. 2 tech giant tap deeper into the automobile industry.

“We have been conducting various projects with Google as a strategic partner. Our automotive technology will now be applied to Google’s self-driving cars,” an LG official said.

A battery pack is a set of any number of individual battery cells.

Google said it will also partner with U.S. automaker General Motors Co., Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp., Germany’s Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG, and join forces with chipmaker Nvidia Corp. and German automotive technology giant Bosch as well.

Earlier this month, LG said its chief has discussed possible business tie-ups with the head of Mercedes-Benz. The company launched the Vehicle Components Division by regrouping its business sectors in 2013 in line with its efforts to tap new sources of profits. [Yonhap]

Via the Joong Ang Ilbo comes this graphic that shows the cheapest places to fill up your car in Seoul and the rest of South Korea:

An increasing number of second-generation Korean Americans living in New York are finding jobs in South Korea. http://t.co/jfm0RuWqNN

— The Korea Times (@koreatimes) January 9, 2015

I have to wonder if this is an attempt by competing Korean retailers to shutdown a foreign competitor?  There are plenty of shopping areas in Korea with horrible traffic:

Swedish furniture retailer IKEA faces a business suspension here because of severe traffic congestion on roads surrounding its first mall, in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi Province.

The municipal city recently demanded IKEA to come up with a “dramatic breakthrough” by Wednesday, or the mall would be shut from Jan. 15.

The mall has operated since Dec. 18 under temporary approval. Gwangmyeong officials said there were no legal problems to withdrawing approval.

“People’s frustration caused by the congestion has reached boiling point,” said an official familiar with the case. “Not only drivers but also people living or working near the outlet are affected.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but IKEA has been under attack in Korea from even before they opened their doors.

Via a reader tip comes this article that explains how the Seoul government is trying to shutdown the ride sharing app Uber by indicting the company’s CEO:

South Korea has indicted the chief executive officer and local subsidiary of Uber Technologies Inc for violating a law governing public transport, becoming the latest jurisdiction to challenge the U.S. taxi service provider.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office issued the indictment against CEO Travis Kalanick and the firm’s Korean unit for violating a law prohibiting individuals or firms without appropriate licenses from providing or facilitating transportation services, an Uber spokeswoman said.  [Fortune]

You can read the rest at the link, but the Seoul government has been trying to shut down Uber in Korea in order to protect their own taxi drivers and the domestic Daum-Kakao app that provides an Uber like service and is endorsed by the taxi union.  This indictment is probably being used to scare Uber out of Korea.  It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Via the Marmot’s Hole it appears that the Uber’s days are number in Korea once Daum-Kakao releases their app that is endorsed by t

South Korea’s leading free messenger service operator Daum Kakao said Wednesday it will launch a taxi service app by the first half of next year as it initiates a new platform of connecting online and offline businesses.

Daum Kakao signed a memorandum of understanding with the Seoul Taxi Association and Korea Smart Card Co. for the service that would link customers with the closest cab through a mobile app. The taxi association has some 255 Seoul-based cab operators as members, and Korea Smart Card is the country’s top transportation payment system provider.

“Daum Kakao has established important grounds for the operation of Kakao Taxi, and we plan to expand cooperation with other taxi operators throughout the country in the future,” the company said in its release.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the Seoul city government passed an ordinance offering rewards of up to a Million Won to people who report Uber taxis which will set the stage for the Daum-Kakao app to take over this market.

The Samsung heir apparent has cracked Bloomberg’s Top 200 of the world’s richest people:

Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of South Korean tech firm Samsung Electronics Co., made the list of the world’s top 200 richest people for the first time as Samsung Group’s heir apparent raked in big fortunes from successful initial public offerings of its two affiliates, the Bloomberg Billionaire Index showed Tuesday.

The 46-year-old Lee’s listed stock value was estimated at US$7.2 billion to rank 183rd worldwide in the latest Bloomberg index, making him the second-wealthiest person in South Korea after his father, Lee Kun-hee.

The senior Lee, who is recuperating from a heart attack he suffered in May, ranked No. 77, with his listed assets worth $13.1 billion as of early Tuesday, the index showed.

Formerly among the world’s 400 richest people in September, the junior Lee has made a big leap forward as the nation’s most powerful conglomerate listed two of its affiliates — Samsung SDS Co. and Cheil Industries Inc. — in just over a month, in a move seen as preparing for management succession. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.