English Articles
3 Reasons Why Seoul is A Mobile Entrepreneur’s Paradise
2016년 02월 28일

Editor’s note: Originally written by Mike Kim, Senior Director Corporate Development at Baedal Minjok Facebook. YouTube. Skype. Hard to believe all 3 iconic companies actually got there start in Korea right? While these Silicon Valley heavyweights have roots in the Bay Area, the origin of their concepts actually hatched on the tiny peninsula of Korea first. Years before Facebook there was Cyworld. Before YouTube, Pandora TV – And long before Skype, a company called Dialpad was…

Kakao acquires Park Here, a startup providing parking search and booking service in Korea 
2016년 03월 01일

Kakao have announced their strategic acquisition of Parking Square the developer and operator of ‘Park Here’, an app that allows searching and reservation of parking spots. The app allows its users to quickly search for vacant parking lots nearby and reserve the vacancy at a discounted rate. The app is appealing to both parking spot users and parking lot operators as it provides parkers a convenient way to access a parking spot…

Korean startup Smatoos receives strategic investment from Miraeen Publishing
2016년 03월 02일

Smatoos, the operator of BeNative Pro, an online business English and Chinese teaching service has secured a strategic investment from Miraeen, an educational content publisher and strategic investment company. BeNative Pro is a service teaching and providing an opportunity to practice the languages of English and Chinese and is delivered in China, Korea and Japan. The service is offered as part of employment training programs by large corporations, including Samsung, LG, SK…

Korea NRC Announced Results On Virtual Reality-Based Rehabilitation
2016년 03월 04일

The National Rehabilitation Center in Korea conducted a study to examine the impact of virtual reality-based exercises combined with standard occupational therapy on distal upper extremity function and the health-related quality of life for stroke survivors. Virtual reality-based treatments have become one of the fastest growing trends in healthcare, but none of the previous studies had provided detailed, quantitative information about the impact of technology on the effectiveness of the rehabilitation process….

Fandom Culture of M.C.N Stars & Global Strategy of Startups
  ·  , 2016년 03월 04일

Last January, there was a special event in Peru, South America. It was a fan meeting event of Nardy Santana (Latinasaram), an YouTube MCN star who creates various contents which are based on the Hallyu Wave (Korean ‘cultural wave’ fuelled by the Entertainment Industry), and more than 2000 fans came all the way to see Nardy. This happened just a year after Nardy had started her YouTube channel called Latina Saram. She…

Second investment in three months for Korean startup Supermenz
2016년 03월 07일

Local supermarket delivery App, Supermenz has secured an investment deal with Korea’s leading startup accelerator ‘Primer’ and Sazze Partners of Silicon Valley’s. The value of the investment has not been disclosed. This is the second investment in three months following the early stage investment in October. Both investments have enabled Supermenz to establish a foothold on the local supermarket delivery service in Korea. The investment will allow Supermenz stick to their strategic operational plan…

Tribeluga with bigger plans to establish Korean startups in other countries
2016년 03월 08일

Tribeluga, a pioneering cross-border innovation platform focusing on funding and nurturing Health, Education, and Environment (HEE) technologies across China, Korea and the US has held a press conference at the Lotte Hotel to announce their performance and plans for the future. Tribeluga was first registered as a Korean entity in 2014 and in the same year held the ‘Tribeluga Tech Conference Beijing’. The company participated in beGLOBAL Seoul 2015 and throughout last year…

Union Invests into Korean beauty MCN startup Leferi
2016년 03월 08일

Leferi Beauty Channel, a popular beauty MCN in Asia has secured a US$822k (KRW 1b) investment from Union Investment Partners. Driving the investment deal was the global trend for video contents. In the Asian market, popular video content categories in the Asian market  include beauty and fashion as well as Korean products. Leferi Beauty Channel has partnered with Youtube Korea over the last 1 year and 4 months to deliver their Creator Academy…

LEE SEDOL WINS AGAINST ALPHAGO IN GAME FOUR
2016년 03월 13일

At today’s fourth game in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match, the best Go player of the last decade, Lee Sedol, came back from three consecutive losses to beat the Go-playing computer program, AlphaGo. Playing as white, Lee won when AlphaGo resigned after 180 moves. Reporters gave Lee Sedol a standing ovation as he entered the press conference. Lee commented, “I’ve never been congratulated so much just for winning a single game. I…

Five of Kakao’s Daum Webtoon Titles to Appear on Chinese Screens through Partnership with Huace Group
2016년 03월 14일

Kakao today announced that it partnered with Huace Group, China’s number one comprehensive film and TV media group, to bring five of its popular Daum Webtoon titles to the screens in China. Kakao and Huace group signed deals for four of its webtoons, with one additional title to follow imminently. Daum Webtoon is Kakao’s web comic platform which first introduced the concept and format of ‘webtoons’ in 2003. Since then, it has…

Cherubic Ventures Announces US$ 120 Million Fund And The New Shanghai Office As Its Global Headquarter
2016년 03월 14일

Cherubic Ventures kicked off 2016 with an annual summit in the glamorous Shanghai, where East meets the West. More than 200 guests from its portfolio companies, partners from top venture capital firms and business partners all attended to share their thoughts on the opportunities and challenges in the early-stage tech investment space in the world. As an early-stage venture capital firm with coverage across U.S and the Greater China region, Cherubic Ventures…

K Cube ventures and Stone Bridge Capital invest into Korean O2O laundry service startup Washon
2016년 03월 17일

Mobile, Game and Technology investment specialist, K Cube Ventures and Stone Bridge Capital have invested US$860k (KRW 1b) into Washon, a laundry service operator. Washon is an on-demand laundry service allowing its users to select collection and return times that are most convenient for them. This O2O (online to offline) came to fruition after Chae J00 Byung, an experienced laundry operator joined forces with IT professionals with experiences working with Naver, Oracle…

Smart Big-Screen Game Maker ‘CSP Media’ Aims For Europe Market
2016년 03월 21일

Korean game contents maker ‘CSP Media’ with its purpose to enter the European market, is producing big screen games in 2016 Cebit Hannover. CSP Media game solution connects user’s smartphones with a smart TV (including TV with OTT or a Setup Box) offering an opportunity to play multiplayer games using smartphone as a console. CSP Media has successfully entered the Chinese market through contracts with Chinese platform providers including the biggest Chinese TV game publisher Wocheng,…

Mass Challenge is open to Korean startups now
2016년 03월 22일

KOISRA Seed Partners, the first Korea-Israel Seed Fund and Accelerator and Mass Challenge based in Boston with satellites in the UK and Israel, signed on partnership agreement last week in order to develop the Korean-Israel startup eco-system. For the first step of collaboration, KOISRA Seed Partners will help Mass Challenge attract Korean startups to participate in its acceleration program in Israel during July~October 2016. The finalists of the acceleration program will enjoy the global mentoring, office…

Rank-Type Social Dating App ‘Charmy’ Launch
2016년 03월 24일

Social dating ‘Charmy’ has successfully completed it’s beta and announced an official launch of the service. Charmy is a dating app using ‘ranking’ and ‘matching’ solution which matches partners based on the rank much like the very well known on-line game League of Legends (LOL). Experiences like being frustrated of not being able to meet a likable match, Charmy has designed its service to minimize the fatigue by adopting ranking system. Basically the users…

Korea launches ‘Startup Campus’ in Pangyo
2016년 03월 26일

South Korea opened its largest startup complex near Seoul on Tuesday as part of its efforts to boost promising local startups and attract foreign companies. The “startup campus” in Pangyo, just south of Seoul, is designed to nurture more than 200 startups, offering workspace and consulting services for capital funding, according to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning. They include the Yozma Group, an Israel-based global venture capital firm, and TEDCO,…

BeyondK, a Hallyu based MCN star promotion program, has been launched.
  ·  , 이 한종 2016년 03월 29일

  BeyondK, a Hallyu based MCN star promotion program, has been launched. BeyoundK is a program which plans and creates contents for Hallyu based global creators. It is a one-stop program cooperated by GoodTimeWithMe(KBEAT) and Wish Company, which also manages all from the producing of projects, managing, marketing, and creating profit. GoodTimeWithMe is a startup which is based on the KPOP fandom community service and the network with Hallyu based MCN stars. For…

Viva Republica, providers of P2P Transfer service ‘Toss’, Raises $23 million
2016년 04월 11일

Viva Republica, the providers of P2P money transfer service ‘Toss’, raised KRW 26.5 billion (about $23 million) on April 11th from a consortium consist of the leading domestic venture capital from KTB and Sillcon valley based firms from Goodwater capital and Altos ventures. The capital raised from this round will enable the company to strengthen Toss’ market dominance and expand its lineup of Fintech services. Toss, which launched on February of last…

Mirion’s Binary Code ‘bCODE’ brings a new way of communication
2016년 05월 10일

Start-up company ‘Mirion’ is now developing ‘bCODE’. bCODE is a binary code which can be written by hand for management of online and offline data collectively, it is also a way of providing internet connection to different products.   bCODE is similar to QR code, but there are some big differences. QR code is a distributor focused system. Usually, only big companies uses printed QR codes for commercial purposes. bCODE however, is a two-way…

Positioning the Korean Wave as ‘Lifestyle’ for a Sustainable Business Model in China
  ·  2016년 05월 30일

Where are the momentum that will lead the next decade in the consumer market in China? One advised to pay a good attention to the ‘Post-8090’ generation. The Post-8090 generation, often named balinghou (Post-80) or jiulinghou (Post-90), refers to the people who were born between 1980s and 1990s in China after the Chinese government has introduced ‘One-child’ birth-control policy in 1979. The Post-8090, also named Small Emperors (xiaohuangdi), can be viewed as…