A KyoChon chicken outlet in New York. The South Korean franchise has opened several stores in New York and California.

By Jane Han, Korea Times Correspondent – NEW YORK ― Every time Tina Shin digs into a plate full of spicy, double-fried chicken wings from Kyochon, she craves some chilled Cass, a Korean beer. But she can’t readily order it off the menu.

That’s because she’s not in Korea, but Kyochon’s newest U.S. outlet on 319 Fifth Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan.

“I guess I can’t have everything, but it’s awesome to enjoy Kyochon just blocks away from where I live,” says Shin, a Korean-American who first tried the fried chicken during her visit to Seoul a few years ago.

The popular Korean wing franchise, which opened its modern $2-million, two-story space, already has several restaurants in New York and California. But the latest addition is located right smack in the center of Manhattan, a positioning aimed at targeting more American customers.

“We’re going after the mainstream market,” Kyochon CEO Kwon Won-kang said when the new shop was launched earlier last month. “We’re not going to limit our accessibility.”

Just like the chicken joint, other Korean brands are starting to move away from the traditional “Koreatown marketing strategy” toward a wider U.S. consumer base.

More and more established labels in a range of industries are taking a stab at introducing their businesses to everyday American shoppers.

Most recently, Amore Pacific launched its premium skincare brand Sulwhasoo at Bergdorf Goodman, one of New York’s most luxurious retailers.

The company is now selling 12 different cosmetics products under the herbal medicine line.

For more casual consumers, Face Shop earlier began selling its mask sheets at Walgreen’s, a mega drugstore chain with more than 6,500 stores nationwide.

Besides the cosmetics names, Hankook Chinaware recently opened its first showroom in Manhattan, while premium luxury brand MCM kicked off sales at New York City’s Saks Fifth Avenue.

“Korean brands are clearly making inroads into the core U.S. market,” said Kim Joo-hwan, a marketing consultant at Liberty, a Manhattan-based agency. – read more at The Korea Times…

Japanese tourists in Myeongdong look at a Japanese-language guidebook on Korea.

Song Woong-ki, The Korea Herald, 3/26/2010 – Two days ago, Motoko Watanabe and her husband arrived in Seoul from their hometown in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan. Since hearing of close friends’ pleasant experiences in Seoul, they figured the short trip to Korea would give them the most bang for their buck.

But what was supposed to be an affordable three days of sightseeing and shopping around the popular shopping districts Myeong-dong and Namdaemun, turned into a budget buster the middle-class newlyweds did not anticipate.

Did they go overboard gorging on sumptuous hanwoo while impulsively buying Yonsama socks and Louis Vuitton handbags?

Hardly.

According to Motoko, the couple spent a third of their travel budget on taxis. “We don’t know our way around so it feels as though we’ve been wasting money and spending more than necessary on taxis,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like we’re going in circles when we’re in cabs.”

She’s not alone in her gripes about taxis.

A recent survey conducted by the Korea Tourism Organisation shows that the number of calls made by disgruntled tourists in 2009 saw a 13.4 per cent increase from the previous year.

Of the complaints, difficulties while shopping and disputing costs of taxi fares topped the list with 32.5 per cent and 17.5 per cent of the total 468 complaints filed.

“Our experience was pleasant up until we walked out of the key attractions around the city,” Watanabe said. “It was when we hopped into a taxi and began getting around town that our trip became unpleasant. We really feel as though we spent twice the amount of our travel budget, and I hate it. In their defense, the drivers just say they don’t understand what we’re saying, but I find it personally inconvenient. It’s made me disdainful of the drivers here.”

When asked about taxi scams, Baek Ki-chun, 62, a taxi driver, was quick to defend his profession.

“That was only during the old days when you saw drivers hanging around the airport looking for people to rip off,” he said. “Nowadays, we don’t do stuff like that to tourists, because we care very much about giving the best impression possible of our country to foreign guests when they visit.”

Baek, a 15-year veteran, conceded later that there might be some who take advantage of tourists. “Look, in countries like Japan, you don’t see drivers committing such shameful acts because their drivers get all the proper employee benefits and a respectable salary, regardless of how many passengers they get per day,” he said.

“Here in Korea, they tried to implement something similar when DJ (former President Kim Dae-jung) was around, but it never happened because people started saying drivers would just slack off without making their rounds, so the government decided to scrap the whole idea.

“The only thing we have to rely on is getting as many passengers in a day as possible in order to meet our quota. So I can understand when some drivers get desperate enough to commit disgraceful acts like that.” – read more at Asia News Network…

(The Korea Herald) Phone salesperson Lee Geon-seok said he has been so busy with customers hoping to buy the newly released iPhone that he has not had time to eat.

He said iPhone sales reached 100 units per day at his two KT stores, accounting for around 80 percent of total handset sales there. “It’s a war. iPhone sales are explosive,” Lee told The Korea Herald.

He said his store is running short of iPhones because of strong demand. Korean customers snapped up 70,000 iPhones as of Sunday – just eight days after its release in Korea, according to a KT spokesperson.

This is rare in the Korean handset market, which has been dominated by Samsung and LG. Global handset makers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson have posted poor sales here.

It remains to be seen whether the initial strong sales of Apple’s iPhone, driven by pent-up demand, will continue. But for now, the small gadget is rattling the country’s mobile market.

The iPhone launch appears to have hit LG harder than Samsung. Sales of LG’s flagship phone Chocolate slumped this month, and the company has few competitive smartphone models.

“Sales of the Chocolate phone are meager,” a KT spokesperson said yesterday, without giving the figure.

Top mobile carrier SK Telecom also said yesterday daily sales of the Chocolate slumped to 250 units this month, from 400 units last month.

This contrasts with Samsung’s new smartphone Omina 2, whose daily sales reached a whopping 5,000 units per day this month, SK said. SK Telecom, which does not offer the iPhone, sharply increased its subsidies for Omnia 2, to stave off the challenge from the iPhone.

The iPhone, which is offered exclusively via second-ranked KT, also posted 5,000 units of daily sales this month, according to a local report yesterday. – read more at The Korea Herald…

A model tests the three-dimensional (3D) images beamed on Samsung Electronics’ latest 55-inch liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen developed for 3D-enabled televisions. (Korea Times)

By Kim Yoo-chul, Staff Reporter, The Korea Times – South Korea’s leading electronics players are beefing up their defense against patent abuse by introducing new measures to protect their technology and reputations.

Samsung Electronics, the leader in the chip and flat-screen industries, has increased the number of its staff specializing in patent issues by 300 to 550 since 2005, according to company representatives.

It says patent-related issues have emerged as one of the company’s top concerns in the face of intensified competition among rivals in the consumer electronics industry.

A growing number of patent trolls is another problem.

These individuals or companies enforce patents as an investment to collect royalties, rather than manufacture products or delivering services based on them.

LG Electronics is planning to increase the number of its patent staff by a “certain percentage” in 2010, while LG Display, the world’s No. 2 maker of LCD panels, is also reviewing the possibility of expanding its legal affairs capability, according to industry sources.

“It’s necessary for LG to constantly expand the number of patent staff to reinforce the negotiation power in international patent lawsuits,” an LG representative said.

Samsung Electronics has been involved in a years-long patent war with Rambus in chips. At the same time, the company has been tied up in a patent litigation with Japan’s Sharp in flat-screens and Finland’s Nokia in mobile phones.

“Samsung and Sharp have many patents related to LCD technology so these kinds of lawsuits will continue to occur as long as they make TVs,” said Kim Yoo-jin, an analyst at Taurus Investment & Securities. – read more at The Korea Times…

Apple's iPhone is a big hit in its first week of release in South Korea

By Kim Tong-hyung, Staff Reporter (The Korea Times) – Samsung Electronics and Apple are about to duke it out in Korea’s emerging “smart” phone market, and it looks like local Internet company, Daum (www.daum.net), will have a role in settling the bragging rights.

Daum, which operates the eponymous Web portal that trails only Naver (www.naver.com) in online traffic, is having all of its 1,000 employees choose between the newly released Apple iPhone and Samsung’s flagship smart phone, T-Omnia II, in the company’s free phone program.

Daum is desperate to get ahead in mobile Internet services, and by providing data-enabled handsets to employees for free and paying for their data expenses for the first two years, the company is looking to source innovation in-house.

It remains to be seen which between the iPhone and T-Omnia II end up as the phone of choice for Daum employees, and Samsung seems eager to advise them on their happy headache.

According to Daum officials, Samsung sent sales personnel to Daum’s Seoul headquarters to convince the company’s employees that T-Omnia II represents the better device.

The iPhone is released by KT, the country’s second-biggest mobile operator, while T-Omnia II is pitched by SK Telecom, the top wireless carrier that has a 50-percent-plus market share.

“We thought we were getting iPhones at first, but with T-Omnia II later becoming an option, there are more things to think about,” said a Daum employee.

“In the past few years, we have been putting much emphasis on delivering mobile Internet services and Apple’s mobile Internet devices, such as the iPhone and iPod Touch, were greatly considered when we developed new applications. So there has been a buzz in anticipation of an iPhone release among us for years, but you would have to say that T-Omnia II is an impressive device in its own right.”

Although it would be over-the-top to call the event the “Judgment of Daum,” it is easy to understand why the normally unflappable Samsung is touchy about the results.

Less than a week after its release, iPhones are flying off Korean shelves and showing promise to shake the hierarchy of the local handset market where Samsung and its bitter industry rival, LG Electronics, have been enjoying a near-duopoly. – read more at The Korea Times…

Samsung's NAND flash memory chips are used in Apple's iPhone

By Kim Yoo-chul, Staff Reporter – The Korea Times – There are growing complaints in the semiconductor industry that Apple, the “smart” phone maker extraordinaire and major chip buyer, is manipulating NAND flash memory prices through its “questionable” purchasing strategies, industry sources said Sunday.

And there is not much that Samsung Electronics, the world’s biggest flash memory maker, and Hynix Semiconductor, the industry’s No. 3 player, can do about Apple’s moves, as the American company increasingly gains leveraging power due to the global popularity of its iPhone handsets and other consumer electronics products.

The summary of the arguments goes as this ― Apple is contributing to the suppression in flash memory prices by ordering more chips from semiconductor makers than the amount it actually buys from them.

“Apple should certainly be blamed for deteriorating the supply and demand cycle in the global NAND flash market,” a senior industry official told The Korea Times, refusing to be named.

“Apple has asked Korean semiconductor makers to produce a certain amount of chips for its digital products, only to actually purchase a smaller volume eventually. The company doesn’t make immediate purchases, but waits until chip prices to fall to the level the company has internally targeted.”

The chip industry had hoped Apple would increase purchases of NAND flash memory chips to boost the output of iPhone and other flagship devices.

The global iPhone craze currently has Apple drenched in robust earnings.

NAND flash memory chips are primarily used in memory cards and storage drives in mobile devices, computers and other consumer electronics products.

Another industry official, also reluctant to be identified, used the words “absurd” to describe Apple’s purchasing strategies.

“Samsung and Hynix both provide chips to Apple and have less of an edge in deciding prices and volume. Apple’s strategy could hurt the industry’s health,” he said.

Both Samsung and Hynix refused to officially comment, as did officials from Apple’s Korean office.

“We already knew about this,” a Samsung official said, without elaborating further. – read more at The Korea Times…

Korea International Trade Association Vice Chairman Oh Young-ho, second from right, shows buyers around the “Big Buyer Exhibition” at COEX in southern Seoul, Thursday. / Courtesy of KITA

By Kim Hyun-cheol, Staff Reporter (Korea Times) – Around 150 buyers from 100 global companies visited South Korea to attend a joint fair to promote Korean goods, which kicked off Thursday, according to the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).

The two-day event ― “Export to China, Export to the World 2009/2010” ― is being held at the COEX Mall in southern Seoul.

KITA teamed up with China’s Alibaba.com, the world’s largest business-to-business online marketplace, to offer opportunities to market products from Korean small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Participants in the fair include 12 of the world’s 500 biggest companies selected by U.S. magazine Fortune, such as Walmart, Levis, Nestle, Best Buy and French-based international retail group Auchan.

Some Chinese conglomerates are also taking part in the exhibition, including the Vanguard Group, China’s No. 1 retail chain.

The fair is part of the joint program between KITA and Alibaba.com, which will run for a year, and aims to give Korean SMEs a better chance to export their products and open up new markets for them in China and other overseas destinations.

Also as part of the program, Alibaba.com opened a channel featuring products from Korean suppliers, the third specialty country channel launched on their Web site following China and India.

KITA estimates contracts valued at $440 million will be signed at the fair. – read more at The Korea Times…

By Kim Tae-gyu, Staff Reporter (Korea Times) – The auction for Daewoo Engineering and Construction, Korea’s third-largest builder and held by the cash-strapped Kumho Asiana Group, may fail due to lack of interest.

A source claimed Wednesday that the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), which has been touted as the top contender to buy Daewoo Construction, is indifferent to the Seoul-based builder.

‘Daewoo is not something that the ADIA is looking at. The ADIA has no interest in the firm,” said a person who is close to the sovereign-wealth fund owned by Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates.

‘For the sellers, it would be helpful to put the ADIA on the list of potential buyers to get higher prices. But the ADIA is not involved this time,” he said.

This means that the auction on Daewoo might collapse as, out of the four short-listed candidates, only the ADIA consortium had been reported to have sufficient capacity to snap up Daewoo.

‘We should wait until the deadline of the final bidding, which falls next week. But if the ADIA does not participate in the bidding, it is bad news for Kumho Asiana,” said Yoon Jin-il, an analyst at IBK Securities. – read more at The Korea Times

Samsung CDMA Phones

By Kim Yoo-chul, Staff Reporter (The Korea Times) – Samsung Electronics has sealed a new 15-year contract with Qualcomm Inc. for the cross-licensing of wireless telecom technology.

The world’s No. 2 mobile handset maker will make a down payment of $1.3 billion to Qualcomm for using the U.S. firm’s patents for third- and fourth-generation wireless technology, a Samsung spokesman said.

The deal also involves payment of running royalties, but Samsung failed to give specifics on the matter.

Qualcomm, the world’s leading producer of mobile phone chips, owns key patents in code division multiple access (CDMA) technology, one of the most widely used wireless network standards in the world.

Under the contract, Qualcomm will gain the right to use Samsung’s 57 patent licenses in mobile technology. The cross-licensing deal also includes fourth-generation wireless technology used in handset devices and base stations.

Samsung officials and a spokesman of Qualcomm’s South Korean subsidy declined to comment on the number of licenses transferred from Qualcomm.

The latest agreement is a revised version of an existing technology licensing. Usually, mobile phone makers pay between 5-5.75 percent of each handset’s price to Qualcomm in royalties. read more at The Korea Times…

Samsung is the world's leading memory chip maker

By Lee Youkyung – SEOUL, Oct. 30 (Yonhap) — Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s leading memory chipmaker, said Friday that its third-quarter earnings more than tripled from a year ago on a rise in prices of key products.

Net profit stood at 3.72 trillion won (US$3.16 billion) in the July-September period, compared with 1.22 trillion won a year ago, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Sales jumped 29.1 percent on-year to 24.86 trillion won, and operating profits doubled from a year ago to 2.77 trillion won, it said.

Shares of Samsung Electronics traded at 728,000 won on the Seoul bourse as of 10:15 a.m., up 1.39 percent from Thursday’s close. read more at Yonhap News Agency…