Maru SF to open in Silicon Valley in November as Korean startup gateway
Maru SF, a startup campus and networking hub operated by the Asan Nanum Foundation, will open in Silicon Valley this November, marking the organizat...
K-beauty contract manufacturers see record Q2 profits; rally likely to continue
South Korea’s major original design manufacturers (ODMs) for cosmetics, led by Cosmax Inc. and Kolmar Korea Co., are estimated to have posted ...
K-beauty craze sends Olive Young online sales to new heights
CJ Olive Young Corp., South Korea’s top beauty store chain, is another beneficiary of the global K-beauty surge, with its online cosmetics sal...
Rap icon Cardi B joins K-beauty’s celebrity fan club with BB cream
Cardi B, the Grammy-winning rapper, has joined the growing list of celebrities spotlighting Korean beauty products, fueling a new wave of global ent...
Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman courts Korean AI startups as Riyadh, Abu Dhabi vie to build tech hubs
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Middle East was a land of opportunity for many South Korean construction workers, who labored there under the scorc...
Hong Kong-based CLSA to invest $36.6 mn in K-Beauty pioneer Jungsaemmool Beauty
Hong Kong-based private equity firm CLSA Capital Partners Ltd. has been picked as a preferred bidder to invest 50 billion won ($36.6 million) in Jun...
Taekwang, Anchor Equity shortlisted for Aekyung stake
Taekwang Industrial Co., a South Korean chemical and textile company, and Anchor Equity Partners, a Hong Kong-based private equity firm, have emerge...
Blackstone in talks to acquire Korea’s top salon chain Juno Hair in $590 mn deal
US private equity firm Blackstone Inc. is pursuing the acquisition of Juno Hair, South Korea’s largest premium hair salon chain, in a deal tha...
Even barcodes copied: Counterfeits invasion threatens K-brands
Counterfeit Korean beauty, fashion and food products are surging on overseas e-commerce platforms, with lookalike packaging making them hard to dist...
Amazon, Alibaba, TikTok up ante to woo Korean beauty brands
Riding the wave of global enthusiasm for K-Beauty, e-commerce powerhouses like Amazon and Alibaba are racing to bring South Korean cosmetics and bea...
LG CNS forms strategic partnership with robotics startup Skild AI
LG CNS Co., the information technology service arm of LG Group, said on Tuesday it has formed a strategic partnership with Skild AI to develop AI-dr...
Want to look beautiful? – Here’s the 'Made In Korea' mask pack
South Korean face mask packs – a flagship product of K-beauty – are staging a dramatic revival in popularity.Rising to fame alongside K-...
South Korea’s startup M&A winter deepens capital bottleneck
South Korea’s startup M&A winter has deepened as once major investors like conglomerates are prioritizing restructuring over expansion, ch...
Europe looms large as K-beauty brands look to blue ocean; shares rise
South Korea’s beauty industry has been reaping decent gains from traditionally strong markets such as China and the US – the world&rsquo...
K-Beauty defies seasonal slump with record $980 mn in April exports
The global appetite for Korean beauty products shows no sign of slowing, with their exports in April surging 20% year on year to a record high, ev...
Korea's science ministry picks 10 AI, digital startups to back global growth
South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT on Thursday announced that it has selected 10 startups founded by Koreans in a program to support th...
Shinsegae Chair Chung joins Trump’s Middle East tour
Chung Yong-jin, chairman of South Korea’s retail group Shinsegae Inc., is the only Korean businessperson accompanying US President Donald Trum...
In China’s waterway city Hangzhou, K-beauty redefines ‘shuiguang'
HANGZHOU – The capital of China’s Zhejiang province, Hangzhou, is the southern terminus of the ancient Grand Canal waterway, which origi...
With Ulta deal, APR steps up US beauty push
Medicube, the beauty-tech brand under South Korea’s fast-growing beauty company APR Co., will sell its products through both online and offlin...
Soon for sale: Altos Ventures-backed Cafe Knotted operator
Silicon Valley-based Altos Ventures-backed Good Food For Good (GFFG), operator of South Korea’s popular dessert cafe, Cafe Knotted, will likel...
Seoul-backed K-beauty brands set to make global mark
As Korean beauty products continue to captivate global consumers, five Seoul-based cosmetics and wellness companies are gearing up to penetrate deep...
NCSOFT invests in US game startup emptyvessel
NCSOFT Corp. has made an equity investment in emptyvessel, a US indie games studio, as part of efforts to expand into the first-person shooter genre...
Packaging rides K-beauty wave: Shares of cosmetics container makers soar
As South Korea’s independent beauty brands continue to take the global stage by storm, investors are now looking beyond the creams and serums ...
S.Korea’s Krafton to nurture 6 new game studios in India
Krafton Inc., the publisher of global mega-hit “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” (PUBG), has selected six new Indian game studios to...
KT rolls out Thai-tailored large language model
South Korean telecom service provider KT Corp. has built a large language model (LLM) platform tailored for the Thai market in collaboration with Ja...
Korea launches $27 mn fund to invest in K-beauty startups
South Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups on Thursday announced the launch of a 40 billion won ($27 million) fund to invest in Korean beauty...
K-beauty defies trade headwinds as exports to China, US lead sales growth
South Korea’s beauty industry is mounting a powerful global push, defying trade pressures and economic uncertainties with a surge in exports t...
K-beauty exports to China rebound after 4-month slump
South Korea’s beauty industry is showing signs of recovery in China, with exports rebounding after four months of decline.The turnaround follo...
KKR, Carlyle, Hillhouse race to buy Korean beauty device maker Classys
Global private equity giants such as KKR & Co., Carlyle Group and Hillhouse Capital Group Holdings are vying to acquire Classys Inc. as the Sout...
South Korean VCs back US humanoid robot developer Apptronik
South Korean venture capital firms invested undisclosed tens of billions of won, equivalent to tens of millions of dollars, in US humanoid-developin...
