High-ranking South and North Korean officials struck a deal in the early morning of Aug. 25 after a whopping four-day marathon of non-stop talks. The talks ran for a total of 43 hours and 10 minutes, from the afternoon of Aug. 22 to 12:55 am on Aug. 25. “North Korea expressed regret that land mines
In a bid to raise funds worth 7 trillion won (US$5.92 billion) to get rid of its cross-shareholding structure and become a holding company, the Lotte Group has decided to push ahead with initial public offerings (IPOs) to list shares of its major affiliates, including Hotel Lotte, on the main Korea
A new diplomatic war is looming among Korea, China, Japan, and the United States for hegemony in Northeast Asia.Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe avoided disputes and took political advantage by means of the recent Abe Statement that contains words such as invasion, colonial rule, and apology. He a
In the shareholder meeting of Lotte Holdings Japan, which was the watershed of Lotte Group’s governance dispute, Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin has won a complete victory. Accordingly, Shin Dong-bin has completed his succession as head of the family business. There is now one Lotte under one lea
The Financial Consumer Agency (FCA), a public consumer organization, announced on Aug. 13 that it has banded together with Small Business Association of Korea (SBAK) to indefinitely boycott the Lotte Group’s products.The FCA and KSBA jointly released a statement saying, “By more actively carrying ou
Lee Jae-yong, Samsung Electronics' vice chairman and heir apparent of the Samsung Group, apologized on June 22 for the failure of the group's affiliated hospital Samsung Medical Center (SMC) to stop the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).The SMC has been blamed as a major sour
Renowned Korean novelist Shin Kyung-sook has admitted she “partly” plagiarized the Korean translation of a Japanese short story. She made a public apology Tuesday. Shin is best known in the West for her book “Please Look After Mom,” which sold about 2 million copies in Korea and was translated into
On May 13, President Park Geun-hye met with Korea-Japan Economic Association representatives who visited Seoul to attend the 47th Korea-Japan Business Conference, and asked them to take the lead in effective bilateral economic cooperation.Korea-Japan Economic Association Chairman Mikio Sasaki, Japan
Forbes contributor Eamonn Fingleton has said that money is behind the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to speak at the U.S. Congress.“Congress now runs ever more explicitly on money – and few nations are more generous than Japan in unloading in greenbacks on American politicians whos
According to the Future Research Center, 61 percent of Americans consider Japan’s apology for its wartime atrocities enough, and 68 percent of Americans and 75 percent of Japanese have trust in each other.The survey result shows that U.S.-Japanese relations are more amicable than ever amid the emerg
Samsung C&T has dismissed the person in charge of an illegal surveillance operation that monitored and covertly tailed a stockholder attending a general stockholder's meeting.On March 16, Samsung C&T posted words of apology on a blog under the name of President Choi Chi-hun. The statement by Choi re
German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Japan’s perception of the past via the Asahi Shimbun and the voice of Okada Katsuya, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, when she made a recent visit there. Merkel said Japan must face the comfort women issue without any delay if its bilateral rela
At Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Feb. 27 (local time), Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman bluntly expressed her discontent with the conflict between Korea, China, and Japan surrounding the comfort women, history book, and East Sea issues. She al
The Korean Air scandal in which Heather Cho, a vice president of the airline and daughter of its chairman, lambasted a crew member for incorrectly serving macadamia nuts not according to manual, and then had the crew member removed from the flight has put the spotlight back on nepotism in corporate
Cho Seong-jin, CEO of the Home Appliance Unit of LG Electronics, made his first public appearance after the company’s launch of its current H&A unit. The new unit combines the existing Home Appliances (HA) unit of washing machines and vacuum cleaners and Air Conditioning & Energy Solutions (AE) unit
The interior data of nuclear power plants run by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power were once again released through social network services (SNS).Seventeen files which are assumed to be diagrams of nuclear plant structures were released on the afternoon of Dec. 23 by a twitter user who is presumed to have
There has been a series of accidents at the 2nd Lotte World Mall in Seoul, including the death of a worker at the construction site and accidents in the facility’s cinema and aquarium. With more and more people feeling uneasy about safety concerns, Lotte Group released a statement of apology to the
Talk about the Korean Air scandal surrounding its former vice president Cho Hyun-ah is spreading like wildfire. The company tried to calm the controversy by means of a public apology by Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho. But the victimized cabin manager and a passenger have testified about Cho Hyun-
The necessity of social consensus is emerging in the wake of Daum Kakao’s announcement that it will no longer comply with the government’s wiretapping warrants on its users. Daum Kakao announced on Oct. 13 that it will take extra measures on full scale to protect the privacy of the users. The compan
Despite the efforts Samsung Electronics is making to help the victims of leukemia with official apologies and plans for compensation, more cases of leukemia-stricken factory workers are floating to the top, hurting the company’s image drastically.Recently, the families of leukemia victims submitted