Greater Impact
Korea’s first monthly economic magazine BusinessKorea (publisher Park Jung-hwan) and well-known American economic daily newspaper The Wall Street Journal signed a contract on April 9 in Hong Kong, where the latter’s Asian headquarters are located. The contract covers comprehensive cooperation between the two in online and offline media efforts.
Under the contract, BusinessKorea magazines will be distributed to VIP subscribers of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in Asia, including both Korea and Japan. Also, BusinessKorea will be on display every month side by side with The Wall Street Journal in the VIP lounges of major international airports, in airplanes, and at major premium hotels.
Also, both publications will advertise for each other, both online and offline, starting this month.
BusinessKorea magazine has a long-standing relationship with Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, via syndicating its content with Dow Jones since 1997. This new level of cooperation has been achieved by building on such long-standing agreements.
In the wake of the contract signing, Dow Jones Korea Manager Kwon Hyun-soo explained the background by saying, “The contract was concluded based on the shared sentiment of the company that BusinessKorea is a trustworthy English-language media source that is highly capable of relaying Korean news side-by-side with the WSJ. We appreciate their superb content and editing that we have seen while closely working with them during the extended period of our partnership.”
BusinessKorea Publisher Park Jung-hwan also expressed his aspirations by saying, “We feel more responsible as Korea’s representative English economic media in light of establishing far-reaching cooperative relations with the WSJ. We are looking forward to delivering news on the Korean economy and business to overseas VIP subscribers through even better articles and content. We will also use this as a stepping stone to upgrade Korea’s brand image and status.”
Matthew Weigand, managing editor of BusinessKorea, commented, “As BusinessKorea focuses more on its online presence, we will gain a lot of high-quality visitors via our online advertising partnership with The Wall Street Journal. I am really looking forward to the spike in visitor numbers and our increased ability to reach a wider online audience via this partnership.”
BusinessKorea’s Director Lee Song-hoon also commented, “BusinessKorea was founded in June 1983. For the last 31 years we have been acting as a core information media source in the Korean economy and business sectors by serving world-class opinion leaders, corporations, and organizations in all sorts of areas including government agencies such as the United States Trade Representative, US International Trade Commission, and financial organizations including Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, the IMF, and the World Bank.”