Site crashes as iPhone fans make 130,000 pre-orders
KT Corp., the exclusive provider of the iPhone in Korea, said Wednesday that the number of people who made pre-orders for Apple’s iPhone 4 surpassed 130,000 in the first 13 hours of registration.
The number of people applying for the new model sharply increased from 40,000 as of 8:55 a.m. to over 60,000 as of 9:45 a.m., KT officials said. It then reached 100,000 people as of 1 p.m., and 130,000 as of 7 p.m.
The country’s No. 2 mobile carrier started taking in applications at its website and its 2,900 shops nationwide beginning at 6 a.m.
The exact date of launch, which is only known as sometime in September, has yet to be specified.
“We will make utmost efforts for the launch and delivery of the new model,” Pyo Hyun-myung, president of the mobile business group at KT, said on his micro-blogging site Twitter.
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Key phrases for the G20 Summit revealed
MB’s arm-twisting makes firms ‘modest’
Arguably, “the world’s first’’ and “the largest ever’’ would be the two most frequently-used terms in the press releases of Samsung Electronics, the world’s foremost producer of memory chips and flat-panel displays.
The Suwon-based company may have wanted to use the term once again while releasing its second-quarter performance, which was the best in its history at 37.9 trillion won in sales and 5 trillion won in operating profits.
For some reason, however, the country’s No. 1 corporation did not sell the achievement to journalists as it did not produce the facts in a press release, which was presented late last month.
Robert Yi, Vice President and head of the firm’s investor relations team, also kept a low-key attitude while talking to the media.
“With intensified competition throughout the digital media and mobile industries going forward, it may become a challenge to maintain current profitability levels,’’ Yi said.
“However, we will continue to focus on introducing differentiated products and widening our technology leadership in components to meet these difficult market conditions.’’
Things are similar with other flagship companies of Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
Both Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors, the two iconic subsidiaries of the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, racked up record-breaking quarterly performances over the April-June period.
Hyundai Motor marketed approximately 457,000 vehicles over the three month to record 9.6 trillion won in sales and 1.4 trillion won in net income as its models gained popularity.
Kia Motors chalked up 5.8 trillion won in turnover to net 558 billion won in profits, up by 23.3 percent and 60.7 percent from the corresponding period of last year, respectively, by selling about 350,000 vehicles worldwide.
‘Grandson of Samsung founder commits suicide’
Lee Jae-chan, a grandson of the late Lee Byung-chul, founder of the Samsung Group, was found dead in front of the entrance of an apartment building in Ichon-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Wednesday morning, police said.
An employee at the management office of an apartment complex there told police that the 46-year-old is presumed to have jumped from a window of the apartment building.
Lee Jae-chan is a son of Lee Chang-hee, the late president of magnetic tape supplier Saehan Media who is the second son of the Samsung founder. Lee Chang-hee died of blood cancer in 1991.
Police said they suspect he committed suicide by jumping from his apartment. No suicide note has been found yet.
Lee Jae-chan, former CEO of Saehan Construction, an affiliate of Saehan Group, has not had a job since 2000 when he resigned after a merger, according to reports.
Separated from his family, he lived alone in his apartment for the past five years, the reports said.
4 New Foreign Airlines to Service Incheon
Four new foreign airlines will begin servicing Incheon International Airport within the year.
The Transport Ministry says that state-run Air India resumed servicing the Incheon-Hong Kong-Delhi route on August second and that AirAsia X will also operate flights between Incheon and Kuala Lumpur starting in November.
The United Arab Emirates’ state-run Etihad Airways and Thailand’s low-budget Orient Thai Airlines will also operate flights to and from Incheon within the year.
By 2011, 70 foreign airlines from 50 countries will be servicing Incheon International Airport. Both figures surpass those of Japan’s Narita International Airport and Singapore’s Changi International Airport.
Lee Visits UFG Drill Control Room
President Lee Myung-bak visited Wednesday the control room for the ongoing Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) military exercises between South Korea and the United States.
While there, Lee was briefed on the status of the drills, and he held a video conference with military leaders at the site.
Lee stressed that the UFG drills are meant to serve as a deterrent to war and to maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula. He said that South Korea-U.S. cooperation will serve as a stepping stone to those ends.
‘China Pumps up Investments in S.Korean Bonds’
Bloomberg news agency says China has more than doubled its investment in South Korean government bonds this year.
The report says Chinese investors had 3.99 trillion won (3.4 billion dollars) worth of South Korean national bonds in the year’s first half, which is up 111 percent year-on-year.
Bloomberg said that China is in the process of diversifying its foreign investment portfolio and that South Korean bonds account for one-tenth of China’s total foreign exchange reserves at some two-point-four trillion dollars.
Joint Yellow Sea Drills with US to Come in Early Sep.
The Defense Ministry says South Korea and the U.S. will hold joint antisubmarine drills in the Yellow Sea early next month and that related working-level talks are under way.
A ministry official says that the details of the exercises, including the scale of participation, remain undetermined but that fundamentally the drills aim to enhance antisub warfare tactics.
Cost of unification looms
President Lee Myung-bak’s proposal for a unification tax on Sunday prompted many South Koreans to think about a very disturbing aspect of the longed-for reunification with North Korea — the astronomical cost of integrating two societies that have grown poles apart.
Separated for more than 60 years now with extremely limited cross-border exchanges, South and North Koreas have huge disparities in income, living standards and many other fields.
According to the South Korean central bank, North Korea’s economy is now about 38 times smaller than South Korea’s and 18 times smaller on a per-capita basis.
In South Korea, out of every 1,000 newborn babies less than five die during the first year, but in the North 51 die. South Koreans live more than 15 years longerthan their Northern neighbors. The South’s life expectancy stands at 78.7, compared to 63.8 for the North.
