Judge extends zookeeper's deadline to challenge convictions

Three major telecom companies — SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus — are expected to report an 83.56 percent year-on-year jump in combined third-quarter operating profits to 1.37 trillion won ($1.04 billion), as one-off costs from last year’s hacking incident and voluntary retirement program fade. Their combined revenue is also forecast to rise 1.54 percent to about 15.35 trillion won. According to financial data provider FnGuide, the increase largely reflects a low base from last year, when SK Telecom incurred expenses related to a SIM card data breach and LG Uplus recorded costs for a voluntary retirement program. The combined figure would also be 10.47 percent higher than the 1.24 trillion won recorded in the third quarter of 2024, putting earnings above pre-incident levels. SK Telecom is expected to lead the recovery, with an operating profit soaring 981.5 percent year-on-year to 523.9 billion won and revenue rising 11.87 percent to about 4.45 trillion won. The company’s operating profit slumped to 48.4 billion won in the third quarter last year after the breach in April led to costl

Lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties criticized Coupang on Monday for refusing an on-site investigation by the antitrust regulator, warning that its actions could undermine law enforcement and calling for legislation to prevent companies from obstructing investigations. During a parliamentary audit of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) at the National Assembly in Seoul, Rep. Min Byoung-dug of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said Coupang had blocked investigators from entering its premises, demanding that the FTC explain why it believed evidence could be destroyed. “There is a question of whether Coupang should be allowed to treat Korea’s public authorities this way,” Min said. “If Coupang brazenly disregards the FTC’s authority in Korea, other retailers will do the same … It will be a very bad precedent.” He also called for a committee resolution or a statement from the committee chair or party floor leaders condemning Coupang’s actions. Coupang refused the commission’s on-site investigation in August over suspected violations of the law governi

President Lee Jae Myung ordered the authorities Monday to respond sternly to allegations that a car battery manufacturer duped its workers into getting shots to discharge heavy metals from their bodies in order to cover up dangerous levels of lead in its production line, his spokesperson said. According to a news report, DN Automotive, a major local car battery manufacturer, tricked workers at its plant in the southeastern city of Ulsan into getting the shots multiple times by disguising them as "vitamin injections" ahead of their medical exams. Lee was briefed on the labor ministry's recent decision to refer the company to the police for investigation, and strongly rebuked the government over the fact that the company had passed a work environment assessment even after five times the allowed level of lead was found in its production process, according to his spokesperson Kang Yu-jung. "President Lee said it was an unacceptable and grave human rights violation that a company, which should protect workers' lives and health, made its workers get injections while hiding potential side effe

The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by Korea's tax authority, effectively upholding a lower court's ruling in favor of Google Korea in a corporate tax cancellation case involving about 154 billion won ($115.3 million), judicial officials said Monday. The top court left intact the Seoul High Court's ruling siding with Google Korea in its corporate tax cancellation lawsuit against the head of Seoul's Yeoksam Tax Office by dismissing the defendant's appeal without substantive review Thursday, the officials said. The tax office imposed corporate and local income taxes totaling around 154 billion won on Google Korea in 2020, arguing that the company's transfer of part of its income to Google Asia Pacific based in Singapore was subject to taxation. The office classified the payments as royalty income derived from the use of copyrights and knowhow. But Google Korea took the case to court, arguing that the payments constituted business income for Google Asia Pacific and were therefore not taxable in Korea. The Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of Google Korea, finding that the paym

Biotech company Celltrion said Monday that its operating profit for the third quarter of 2026 is expected to surpass the 500 billion won ($374.3 million) mark for the first time, driven by robust sales in global markets. In its earnings guidance released Monday, the company forecast 1.5 trillion won in sales and 510 billion won in operating profit for the three-month period, representing year-on-year increases of 45.8 percent and 69.2 percent, respectively. Both sales and operating profit reached record quarterly highs, with operating profit surpassing 500 billion won for the first time since the company's establishment. Celltrion said its profitability has improved due to a growing share of high-margin products in its sales mix and improvements in its cost structure. Earlier this year, Celltrion set quarterly operating profit targets of more than 300 billion won for the first quarter, 400 billion won for the second and 500 billion won for the third. The company said it has exceeded its targets in each of the first three quarters, demonstrating that its profit growth has progressed as p

KakaoBank on Monday launched a range of financial services for international residents in Korea, joining local lenders in the race to attract customers from the country's growing foreign population. The new offering from the internet-only lender includes checking accounts, debit cards, overseas remittances and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered multilingual support. "Even though banking has become much more convenient for domestic customers, foreign residents still face the kind of inconvenience we experienced in the past, when we had to visit bank branches just to open an account," Bae Jung-ho, head of KakaoBank's Foreign Customer Camp, said during a press conference in Seoul. "By providing foreign residents with the same app that our 28 million customers already use, we were able to launch more than 50 services at once," he added. KakaoBank's Foreign Resident Account is available to residents aged 19 or older who have an accepted form of identification and a mobile phone registered in their name. Applicants can open an account through a mobile chatbot in about five minutes, the bank

A civic group filed a complaint against Kakao with the privacy watchdog on Monday, alleging that the tech giant's corporate advertising service uses personal data to target users without their consent. The Seoul YMCA said it urged the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) to investigate KakaoTalk’s Brand Message service and impose strict sanctions if violations are confirmed. The group said Kakao replaced its previous channel-based advertising service, which limited promotional messages to users who had added a business’s KakaoTalk channel, with Brand Message, which allows businesses to send ads without requiring users to follow their channels. It alleged that Kakao matches phone numbers provided by advertisers with its own user database to identify ad recipients, even though users had provided their numbers for basic messaging functions, not to receive third-party advertising. “The key alleged violations involve the unauthorized use of personal information and infringement of users’ rights,” the group said. “Although users agreed to provide their phone numbers for

Developing industrial artificial intelligence (AI) requires "world AI" capable of understanding the physical world, and Korea has an increasingly important role to play in this field, according to Yann LeCun, widely regarded as one of the four leading figures in the global AI academia. LeCun and a number of other leading experts shared their views during the Global AI Leaders Seoul Dialogue, an event organized ahead of the fifth International Industrial AI Conference, scheduled for Tuesday in Tokyo. LeCun is a leading AI scientist, a recipient of the 2018 Turing Award, founder of AMI Labs and former chief AI scientist and vice president at Meta. He is known for pioneering convolutional neural networks, which revolutionized image recognition. He also serves as chief science adviser to Project Tapestry, an AI Alliance-led initiative to develop a large-scale AI model through federated learning, which allows AI models to learn from data stored across different countries or companies without requiring the data to be transferred to a central server. Christopher Nguyen, CEO of Aitomatic and chi

Korean budget airline Air Premia has captured more than 20 percent of passenger traffic carried by domestic carriers on the Incheon–Los Angeles route, marking four years of service on its flagship transpacific corridor. The airline said Monday that it transported 759,277 passengers on the route from its launch on Oct. 29, 2022, through September, recording an average share of 15.8 percent among Korean carriers over the period. Its share rose steadily from 12.9 percent in its first year to 14 percent in its second and 15.3 percent in its third, before reaching 20.8 percent in its fourth year. International demand has also grown, with passengers holding foreign nationalities accounting for 44.8 percent of total travelers over the four-year period. Their share climbed from 40.2 percent in the first year to 41.1 percent in the second and 47.2 percent in the third, reaching 49.6 percent in the fourth year. To mark the anniversary, Air Premia is offering promotional fares across five U.S. routes: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Honolulu. Round-trip fares on the Los

Hyosung Chemical, a major Korean producer of advanced industrial polymers, is pushing its high-performance plastics into the European market. The company is targeting automakers and robotics manufacturers with specialized materials engineered for exceptional chemical resistance and durability under friction. The Korean chemical maker is participating in Fakuma 2026, an international plastics processing trade fair running from Monday through Oct. 16 in Friedrichshafen, Germany, where it is presenting its POKETONE material and applications across several industries. POKETONE is engineered to resist impact, abrasion and chemical exposure while absorbing little moisture, helping components maintain their shape and dimensions, the company said. Its strength, wear resistance and flame-retardant properties can also be tailored to specific applications, making it suitable for a range of industrial uses. Hyosung Chemical is highlighting automotive connectors, gears, drive components and medical parts under the exhibition theme “Automotive, Robotics, Medical.” The material is also finding poten

Korean drugmaker HLB has resubmitted its application for U.S. approval of a combination therapy for advanced liver cancer, renewing its push to bring the target treatment to market after addressing regulatory concerns raised earlier this year. The Korean biopharmaceutical company said Monday that its U.S. subsidiary, Elevar Therapeutics, and Chinese partner Hengrui Pharma submitted the application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday, seeking approval of rivoceranib in combination with camrelizumab as a first-line treatment for liver cancer. The resubmission follows an FDA complete response letter issued in July regarding an application Elevar filed in January, prompting the companies to work with regulators to address the agency’s concerns. HLB said inspections of the manufacturing facilities have recently been completed, allowing the companies to submit the application again. The filing is based on CARES-310, a global Phase 3 clinical trial involving patients with unresectable or metastatic liver cancer. In the trial’s final analysis, the combination treatment ac

Korean employers are no longer just asking job candidates if they understand artificial intelligence (AI). Instead, they are requiring hands-on expertise with specific platforms — and Claude is leading the surge in recruitment demand. According to data released Monday by JobKorea, a human resources technology platform operated by Worksphere, recruitment postings mentioning generative AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini jumped 170 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. Among individual tools, Claude recorded the sharpest increase, with mentions climbing 770 percent, followed by Google’s Gemini at 500 percent, ChatGPT at 165 percent, Microsoft Copilot at 96 percent and Midjourney at 46 percent. Claude’s share of postings that named specific AI tools jumped from 17 percent last year to 55 percent this year, narrowing the gap with ChatGPT, whose share remained around 70 percent over the same period, according to JobKorea. Demand also grew for skills related to how AI is applied, with mentions of generative AI, prompt engineering, AI agents and vibe cod