Tag: business

If you go to a Duty Free shop in Seoul the chances are the employee is an ethnic Korean from China:

After graduating from college five years ago, Lee Ju-yeon came to Korea from China to live with her mother, a waitress, and father, a manual laborer.

They are Chinese citizens, but ethnically Korean, part of what is known in China as the Chaoxian ethnic minority.

They struggled here as minorities, and Lee’s parents never had the chance to earn college diplomas. She knew she wanted to do better, and capitalized on her higher education and bilingual ability.

“One day, my friend working at a duty-free shop sent me a job notice over the phone and suggested I apply to work as a salesperson,” said Lee, who requested that her real name not be used. “I applied for five positions at duty-free stores, and all of them asked for interviews.”

Her job put Lee among countless Korean-Chinese workers who, once concentrated in the labor and food service sectors, have emerged in multitudes in the retail sector.

Many work in small stores – most commonly duty-free shops – where Chinese-speaking employees are in high demand due to their ability to cater to the needs the throngs of Chinese tourists, known as Youke in Korea which means a “tourist” in Chinese.

“In our duty free stores in downtown Seoul, 70 percent of the customers are Chinese,” said a representative for Lotte Duty Free.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

It is going to be interesting to see if this law gets passed:

Resentment has mounted so much in South Korea against what has come to be known as “gabjil”, high-handedness by the rich and powerful, that parliamentarians are proposing legislation to punish some of the worst abuses.

A bill to be presented in the national assembly this month is formally called the “Conglomerates Ethical Management Special Law” but has been nick-named the Cho Hyun-ah law.

Cho, also known as Heather Cho, is the daughter of the chairman of Korean Air Lines and was sentenced last week to a year in prison for an outburst on a Korean Air plane while on the ground in New York. It was considered a severe sentence by some legal experts.

The bill proposes to ban members of the powerful business families known as chaebol from working at their companies for at least five years if convicted of a crime. In earlier cases, some high-profile offenders were pardoned, serving little or no jail time, although recently-convicted chaebol executives have found it harder to avoid prison.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if it is even Constitutional in Korea to make special laws that focus on particular individual families?

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?

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 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.

I wonder what Putin thinks of this deal?

A South Korean defense company will sign a deal with Poland, today, to sell 120 locally developed self-propelled howitzers, a military source said Tuesday.

“Samsung Techwin Co. will sign a contract with Poland’s defense ministry at 7 p.m. in Korea to export K-9 self-propelled howitzers,” the source said, asking not to be identified. “Under the contract, the company will directly supply 24 howitzers by 2017. The remaining 96 will be produced in Poland.”

The total export value is estimated at about $320 million (347 billion won), according to the source.

Samsung Techwin developed the 155-millimeter howitzer for the nation’s armed forces in 1998 to replace K-55 howitzers. Equipped with state-of-the-art firing and mobility systems, the K-9 has a maximum range of 40 kilometers.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this arms purchase by Poland is definitely aimed at upgrading the country’s defenses in wake of Russian aggression in the region.  Samsung Techwin ought to send a big thank you note to Putin for the increased business to the arms market that the South Koreans have been trying to expand for many years.

If goods exports hit $600bn next year (KITA), South Korea may rise to #5 in world, overtaking Netherlands & France: http://t.co/8FqI1UnVbW

— Aidan Foster-Carter (@fcaidan) December 8, 2014

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.