Category: Korea-Business

It is anyone surprised the Korean leftists were not out protesting the ROK-China FTA like they were doing with the U.S.?:

Korea and China more or less concluded years of on-and-off talks about a free trade pact on Monday. President Park Geun-hye and her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping announced the conclusion of the FTA in Beijing on Monday.

The negotiations began in May 2012.

Once the FTA goes into effect, binding the world’s second and 15th-largest economies, it will create an economic bloc valued at US$11 trillion.

Korea stands to gain greater access to a W5,000 trillion (US$1=W1,085) market with a population of 1.3 billion.

Korea is only the third country along with Chile and Peru to sign FTAs with the U.S., EU and China.

The biggest gain for Korean negotiators is that most of the agricultural market, including rice, remains protected from Chinese imports. China in turn managed to maintain existing tariffs on Korean-made petrochemical products, steel and cars. (Chosun Ilbo)

You can more at the link.

ROK, Dutch sign $23 million deal to upgrade atomic reactor in Netherlands http://t.co/Sv2J0Um1a3

— KEI (@KoreaEconInst) November 3, 2014

Busan Haps has the scoop on when Apple fans can expect to purchase the new iPhone 6 in South Korea:

Image via Flickr user Pic-k-art.

Those looking to get their hands on the newest offering from Apple won’t have to wait much longer as they have announced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will begin sales on October 31st in 36 additional countries and territories, including South Korea, as well as across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa have been added by the Cupertino, California company in a press statement yesterday.

Pre-orders by Korea’s three mobile carriers — SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ — will begin October 24th.  [Busan Haps]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Samsung and Facebook may be trying to come up with some kind of partnership to take on their business rivals:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Samsung Electronics Co. headquarters in Seoul on Tuesday, Samsung officials said, in an apparent bid to discuss new business models for the two firms.

A Samsung spokesman said Zuckerberg had visited the headquarters, without revealing other details including people he met with and the purpose of the visit. He is believed to have met with Samsung’s heir-apparent Lee Jay-yong, who was spotted entering the building shortly ahead of the spokesman’s remarks.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if Samsung is trying to better integrate Facebook services into other Samsung products like their TVs or appliances? Anyone have any other ideas on what partnership they could be forging?

I am not sure how this is considered opening the rice market when you put a 513% tariff on imports:

South Korea has notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it will open its rice market in January next year with a 513 percent tariff rate.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Tuesday submitted to the WTO secretariat its plan to revise the country’s tariff rate on rice imports.  [KBS World]

You can read more at the link.

The Global Post takes a look at the massage parlor culture of Korean business:

Not far from glitzy office towers of Seoul are the frenzied hangouts where business is really done: a cacophony of karaoke joints, shady neon-lit parlors, and cluttered barbecue restaurants full of drunken managers ordering their junior staff to pound shots.

To Koreans, the business districts of American cities appear staid, orderly and a bit dull. A shop-worn joke here has it that North America is a “boring heaven” while their country is an “exciting hell.”

No salesman (and the majority are men) gets far here unless he can sing mean, inebriated karaoke and then slug through negotiations the next morning with a thumping headache. South Koreans slam the world’s largest quantity of hard liquor, imbibing 11.2 shots of soju per week, more than twice the average Russian’s vodka consumption (although soju isn’t always as strong).

What happens when this macho after-hours culture goes too far, littering the company tab with payments to prostitutes and hostess clubs? “That’s the business model we depend on. When the Korean men are doing business together, they hang out at these places,” explained the sex industry consultant.

There’s a dark logic to the debauchery.

“When you’re a man and you do something dirty and sinful with your business partner around, you share your secrets, you share trust like brothers. You can always trust your new business partner.”  [Global Post]

You can read much more at the link about the different levels of clubs, massage parlors, and karaoke bars that serve as fronts for prostitution to include how many aspiring celebrities work in the high end clubs in hopes of landing a wealthy patron to help their careers.

This is an example of how absurd the competitive between Korean companies can get when things get this petty:

Following recent news that Korean alcohol company execs personally orchestrated a rumor-mongering campaign against the competition on Korean home turf, the bizarre story of an LG executive allegedly vandalizing Samsung-made washing machines in two Berlin appliance shops earlier this month leads one to question whether the country’s highly-competitive industries are taking it all a little too seriously.

On September 3rd, sales staff at the two different appliance shops in Berlin found five display models on the showroom floor with broken doors. The sales staff called local police after CCTV allegedly showed Jo Seong-jin, the president of the Home Appliance Division of LG Electronics, heavily leaning on the door hinges of the Samsung Crystal Blue washing machines so that they would be unable to close properly. The LG team was in town for the 2014 IFA electronics show.  [Busan Haps]

You can read more at the Busan Haps link.

Another day, another returned US beef shipment:

South Korea found banned bones in a U.S. beef shipment for third time this month and plans to send the entire shipment back to the United States, an official said Wednesday.

South Korea’s Agriculture and Forestry Ministry said it found rib bones earlier in the day in one box of a 16.15-tonne shipment that arrived in South Korea on Aug. 5, the ministry official said. He asked not to be named, citing the agency’s policy. [Kim Kwang-tae, C-News]

The Koreans have picked a good time to keep returning beef shipments because our US politicians are all consumed with General Petraeus’ report to Congress and are not likely to notice all the beef shipments being turned around from Korea. 

Here we go yet again:

South Korea said Tuesday it found bones, banned because as a mad cow disease prevention, in the latest shipment of American beef and will revoke import approval for JSP Swift’s plant in Grand Island, the U.S. packing plant that processed it.

The packing plant was already suspended from shipping meat to South Korea since July, said JSP Swift spokesman Marco Sampaio.    The latest shipment was sent before the Grand Island was suspended for a similar violation in July […]

South Korea’s Agriculture and Forestry Ministry said rib bones were found Monday in one box of a 15.5-ton shipment that arrived in South Korea on Aug. 10.

The ministry said it will send the entire shipment back to the United States. [Journal Star]

At this rate there won’t be any meat packing companies left in the US to ship beef to South Korea. 

OFK has two excellent postings I recommend everyone check out.  The first posting is about the apparent death of the US-ROK FTA.  Joshua as well as Brendon Carr provide some excellent insight into why this agreement is finally dead.  The second posting is about the agenda of the Second Inter-Korean Summit.  As I expected human rights, the closing of forced labor camps, and the freeing of South Korean hostages in North Korea is no where on the agenda.