According to an article on Business Korea, the Korean government is planning to invest at least $209 million USD over the next five years to promote the growth of the game industry. This comes in a year where game developer 4:33 Creative Labs raised around $110 million USD from Tencent / Line, Smilegate bought a $110 million USD stake in Sunday Toz, Devsisters went public at a $627 million USD valuation, we announced…

[This article was originally published on Forbes] I was in Asia last week to attend a Demo Day for startups that participated in a two month acceleration program through DEV Korea where I serve as a principal. These companies had split their time between New York and Seoul in order to gain a global perspective that could be applied to their ventures while they were still in a formative stage. This is…

‘Appspand’ is an advanced communication service, allowing voice, video, and chat to be added to any web/mobile app, with a few lines of additional code. Uberple was founded in Jan 2013 with the vision of dramatically improving communication within the financial services industry. This need was borne out the founder’s experience of crude tools available for communication both internally and with clients. While their scope has been broadened to embrace opportunities in…

The programming and Software education market is booming in Korea. Starting from next year, domestic software education will become mandatory for middle school students, and by 2018 it will become part of the national curriculum for elementary, middle and high school. And Korea is not the only nation focusing on this area, with governments across the globe aiming to bake computer science into standard education. For example, as of this September computer…

K Cube Ventures recently announced a $700,000 investment into mobile game developer ‘A-33 Studio.’ With this investment A-33 Studio will focus on ramping up their mobile FPS game production and aim to be ready to release their first title by end of next year. The title is named ‘Project S’ for now, and is an ambitious plan to maximize online mobile FPS game experience by integrating a fully optimized user interface along…

As reported by Business Korea, the  Korean government recently announced that it plans to relax regulations on new innovation-driven industries, including as financial technology (fintech) and the Internet of Things (IoT). This is a positive regulatory signal for local startups in these industries that have struggled against regulation. It also bodes well for the new startup accelerator in Seongdo, that will run its first hardware / IoT / Smart home program in 2015. At…

Social Commerce In Korea Is A hot Topic These Days With Coupang’s Recent $300 Million USD Fundraise – Here’s a Review of the Market from our friends at Business Korea. In May 2010 social commerce arrived in Korea, thanks to local player, TMON. In the same year two other local players also started operations, Coupang and. Four years later, three companies are still operating at a loss, engaged in fierce competition. Coupang has…

Based in Seoul, Chinese language education company CHINADA have secured $1 million USD from Soft Bank Ventures and Coolidge Corner Investment. Their digital educational program ‘Chinatan’ is unlike other typical systems that focus on grammar and reading. Instead it is aimed towards improving conversational skills. It simulates real life situations, such as markets, restaurants, university campus, hotels, etc. This allows students to experience day to day situations experienced by locals. To build…

Yello Mobile’s location-based SNS ‘1km’ has announced the launch of their international version, which now supports ten different languages including English, Chinese, Spanish, and Thai. Riding the current of ‘Korean-Wave’, they are targeting South-east Asian and Latin American countries, which are hotspots for Korean popular culture. There is a long term plan to expand their global coverage further in the future. The app, which uses GPS to connect people within a 1km…

DEV Korea’s Startup Acceleration Program ‘Start it Up in New York’ Demo Day will be held in seoul this afternoon. DEV Korea is one of a growing number of domestic and international accelerators in Seoul that are capitalizing on the rapid growth in the domestic startup ecosystem Sparklabs will also hold their demo day December 11. DEV Korea was nominated as the 2014 Global Accelerator Develop Management Agency by the Ministry of…

“We want to be the Amazon of Korea. We are the largest online retailer here, and we’re one of the most well-funded tech companies in Korea.” CEO of Coupang, Bom Kim in an interview with Forbes To accelerate this growth Coupang has just announced another huge funding round, worth $300 million USD, from BlackRock Private Equity Partners. This follows fast on the heals of another $100 million USD round led around five months…

Two weeks after the third anniversary of founding Between, the world’s largest social network for couples, has hit a major milestone, achieving 10 million global downloads. Since launching 3 years ago, Between has enjoyed 100% year-on-year growth. What is perhaps even more encouraging is that in 2014, much of this growth came from overseas markets, such as Japan, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Japan hit its 1 million local downloads earlier this year,…

According to the Korea Small Business Institute, small and medium enterprises running their own research institutes suffered from a technology outflow worth $5.6 billion between 2011 and 2013. The amount was equivalent to 58% of their R&D expenditures for the same period. The sales decrement caused by the tech leak was $2.27 million on average, or around 20% of annual sales. However, despite knowledge of the problem, most companies have not make…

Perhaps in response to user concerns around privacy, Daum Kakao has just introduced ‘Secret Chat’ mode and ‘Decline Invites’ features for their KakaoTalk messenger, adding a higher level of privacy to the service. The new features provide users with increased options on how communications are carried out – and with whom. Secret Chat mode is a new type of chatroom that employs end-to-end encryption on all messages exchanged within the chatroom. The…

This is part two of this story. Part 1 here In 2010 when Bong-jin Kim left’ Naver’ (Korea’s primary online search portal), he had no idea about Venture Capital or ‘Exit’. Additionally, he had no interest in global expansion. He built his startup to focus on solving ‘small issues that Koreans face in their daily lives’. Yesturday we discussed how he raised his first three rounds of funding. Today we look at how…

In 2010 when Bong-jin Kim left’ Naver’ (Korea’s primary online search portal), he had no idea about Venture Capital or ‘Exit’. Additionally, he had no interest in global expansion. He built his startup to focus on solving ‘small issues that Koreans face in their daily lives’. That is how Baedal Minjok started. But recently his ‘startup’ raised $36 million USD from Goldman Sachs. He concluded, “if a person like me who had…

We reported recently that Chinese investors have been making inroads into Korea. Now we are seeing the first signs of what fruits those investments are likely to bear. As reported by Business Korea, Korean gaming companies are beginning to target the Chinese mobile gaming market, in partnership with Tencent. In a new trend for the Chinese internet giant, Tencent is now actively opening its doors to Korean companies interested in entering the…

eBook store ‘Ridibooks’ just announced an $8 million investment from Neoplux, Atinum Investment, Company K Partners, and Mirae Asset Ventures. Ki-sik Bae, a representative from Ridi Corporation has gained notoriety in the local publishing market as he has consistently been dedicated to returning around 75% of the profits from sales on his platform to the writers since 2008. This was around the time that the first iPhone was released. During a previous…

  “The Core of Mobile Advertising is Demand Estimation” Tapjoy, the company that recently acquired 5Rocks talked with a beSUCCESS editor about their first jointly produced product. In August this year mobile game analytics company 5Rocks from Korea was acquired by USA-based mobile advertisement platform Tapjoy. With 14 overseas branches and 600 million users per month Tapjoy is the world’s largest mobile advertisement company. Complimenting this portfolio, ‘5Rocks’ is an exemplary mobile…

“The upcoming two years will be a defining point for the Korean startup ecosystem” KJ Byeon, KStartup Started as a pilot program in 2012, Kstartup officially launched in January 2013 and is now regarded as the biggest acceleration / incubation program in Korea. Supported by both Korean and American corporations (including Google, Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs, and SK Planet), it focuses on early stage startups that aim to build global companies. Founders are…