[Finance Awards] Hanwha Life turns to global markets, AI for future growth

Hanwha Life is accelerating its overseas expansion and digital transformation as it seeks new growth engines beyond Korea’s saturated insurance market. While many Korean insurers have targeted Southeast Asia in recent years, Hanwha Life has stood out for the scale and ambition of its global push, expanding simultaneously across banking, insurance and digital finance. In Indonesia, the company became the first Korean insurer to acquire a foreign bank when it purchased Nobu Bank earlier this year.

Nov. 27, 2025

[Finance Awards] Hana Financial doubles down on value-up push with bigger shareholder returns

Hana Financial Group has unveiled an aggressive plan to boost its corporate value, vowing stronger shareholder returns and a business overhaul aimed at breaking free from its chronic undervaluation. The group’s core target is to lift its price-to-book ratio above 1.0 — a symbolic threshold that indicates a company is valued fairly relative to its assets. A PBR below 1.0 suggests a stock trades at a discount, and Hana says it intends to correct that by demonstrating clearer, sustainable growth to

Nov. 27, 2025

Korea, tech giants form GPU task force to push massive Nvidia buy

South Korea kicked off a high-level working group with the country's top tech giants on Thursday as it begins coordinating plans to secure 260,000 advanced graphics processing units from Nvidia for domestic AI development. Ministry of Science and ICT vice minister Ryu Je-myung met with executives from Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, SK Telecom and Naver to launch the new working group, according to the ministry. The joint task force will coordinate large-scale procurement and deployment plan

Nov. 27, 2025

Celltrion launches first Xolair biosimilar in Brazil

Celltrion launched its allergy treatment Omlyclo (omalizumab) in Brazil on Thursday, marking the first time a Xolair biosimilar has entered Latin America’s largest pharmaceutical market. Omlyclo is the first biosimilar of Xolair, a global blockbuster treatment for allergies. Capitalizing on its status as a “first mover,” Celltrion aims to secure early Brazilian market dominance ahead of competitors. The launch begins with a 150-milligram dose, with an additional 75-milligram dose scheduled for r

Nov. 27, 2025

Hanwha Life rolls out AI tool for foreign planners

Hanwha Life said Thursday it has introduced a mobile translation assistant powered by generative artificial intelligence, designed to help foreign financial planners prepare more easily for Korea’s insurance qualification exams. The new service provides Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese learning videos, as well as practice questions and full mock exams in multiple languages. Built entirely for mobile use, the new service allows users to begin studying anytime, anywhere. Hanwha Life said the new ser

Nov. 27, 2025

YouTube Premium Lite to debut in Korea under antitrust deal

Google will launch YouTube Premium Lite in South Korea — a more affordable subscription plan offering ad-free viewing, background play and offline downloads — at over 40 percent less than its standard Premium service. Korea will become the first country in the world for the company to introduce the Lite plan as a permanent offering. The move comes in the wake of the Fair Trade Commission’s final approval Thursday of a consent decree agreement with Google, wrapping up an antitrust investigation i

Nov. 27, 2025

Youngone heiress builds on father’s legacy in Busan lecture

Youngone Corp. Vice Chair Sung Rae-eun, the executive behind the global success of The North Face brand, headlined a special guest lecture hosted by the Busan Federation of Textile & Fashion Industry on Tuesday at the Busan Fashion Biz Center. The seminar, titled “Endless Lessons: From Experience to Management,” was part of the center’s broader effort to support successful startups and strengthen the capabilities of new designers in the region. Opening her talk by introducing herself as a “facto

Nov. 26, 2025

Friends turned rivals: Korean shipbuilding heirs enter MASGA race

As Korea looks to advance with its "Make American Shipbuilding Great Again," or MASGA, initiative, two chaebol leaders — HD Hyundai Chair Chung Ki-sun and Hanwha Group Vice Chair Kim Dong-kwan — face daunting tasks to successfully enter the United States market and continue to bolster global competitiveness. With the total amount of the investment in the MASGA project set at $150 billion between Seoul and Washington, Kim and Chung — each of them third-generation scions in their early 40s — have

Nov. 26, 2025

Crypto exchanges race to woo corporate clients

South Korea has yet to fully open the door to corporate cryptocurrency trading, but local exchanges are already racing to win over institutional clients, a segment widely seen as the key to deepening liquidity and stabilizing the country’s volatile virtual asset market. Earlier this year, the Financial Services Commission took its first cautious step by allowing a limited set of entities, including law enforcement agencies, nonprofits and virtual asset service providers, to conduct crypto transa

Nov. 26, 2025

4th Nuri mission moves Korea toward commercial spaceflight

South Korea’s first homegrown Nuri rocket, or KSLV-II, was set for its fourth launch early Thursday, marking a pivotal moment in the country’s bid to transition from a state-led space program to the commercially driven “New Space” model. After three successful missions between 2021 and 2023, the fourth flight represents more than a routine deployment. It is the first launch in which Hanwha Aerospace — not the government — is leading rocket production, assembly and supply-chain management, using

Nov. 26, 2025

SK hynix turns its HBM chips into ... chips

SK hynix, the world’s top memory chipmaker, is taking its high-performance HBM chips out of the server room and into snack aisles. The company on Tuesday unveiled HBM Chips, a honey-banana–flavored corn snack created in collaboration with convenience store chain 7-Eleven. The name comes from the semiconductor firm’s star product, high bandwidth memory, or HBM — the ultra-profitable chips powering today’s AI boom. Shaped like tiny, square semiconductor blocks, the chips are coated in honey-banana

Nov. 26, 2025

Samsung, SKT team up for 6G, AI-RAN research

SK Telecom said Wednesday it is joining hands with Samsung Electronics to develop key technologies for 6th Generation mobile networks to enhance AI-native wireless infrastructure. Signing the agreement earlier in the month, the two companies agreed to conduct joint research on AI-powered radio access networks, focusing on three core areas of AI-based channel estimation, Multiple-Input Multiple-Output antenna transmission and reception, and AI-RAN-driven scheduling and core network technologies.

Nov. 26, 2025

Starbucks Korea wins top shared-growth award

Starbucks Korea said Tuesday it has received the Prime Minister’s Commendation at the 2025 Shared Growth Week Ceremony, recognizing its programs that support small merchants, local farms and community profit-sharing. The ceremony, held at KBIZ Hall in Seoul, was hosted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea Commission for Corporate Partnership to highlight collaboration between large companies and smaller enterprises. Starbucks was cited for its three-pillar “win-win” model: supporti

Nov. 26, 2025

GS heirs promoted to steer energy-transition push

GS Group announced a sweeping 2026 leadership reshuffle on Wednesday, elevating two core energy business chiefs to vice chairs as the conglomerate prepares for a major strategic reset in the global energy transition. The promotions of Hur Yong-soo, CEO of GS Energy, and Hur Se-hong, CEO of GS Caltex, to vice chair are the centerpiece of the shake-up. The two executives represent the third and fourth generations of the larger GS and LG founding family lineage, a fact that underscores the group’s

Nov. 26, 2025

Customs agency bets on AI to bolster border security, tax compliance

The Korea Customs Service is turning to artificial intelligence to strengthen border security, improve tax compliance and uphold fair trade order, as the nation confronts increasingly complex trade conditions, ranging from supply-chain shifts to US tariff policy changes and intensifying global tech competition. The customs agency recently adopted a new vision of “Leading Fair Growth with AI” to respond to the rapidly changing trade landscape and reinforce safeguards for the nation’s economy and

Nov. 26, 2025