Showing posts with label one year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one year. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Korea: Robust, Hi-tech, Export-oriented

If you look at my Blogger Profile to the right on this page, you will see those words, written a year ago as I began this blog and planned my sojourn here. A year later, it's more true than ever, as stories out today in Korea's leading paps, the Korea Times and The Korea Herald, report:

  • between them, Samsung Electronics and Hynix (formerly Hyundai Electronics) captured 61% of the worldwide DRAM market, up from 48% a year ago
  • the world's two biggest LCD makers, Samsung and LG Display, also captured 55.4 percent of the global flat-screen market in the second quarter, up from 44.5 percent a year ago
  • Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors saw their combined market share in the United States reach 7.54 percent as of June, more than a 3 percentage point gain from 4.41 percent in December
  • in the European market, their market share hit 3.8 percent in the first half of 2009, a 0.7 percentage point increase from 3.1 percent recorded during the same period last year. Data showed a rebound from 2007, when their market share in the European market contracted to 3.2 percent from 3.6 percent in 2006
  • on the back of brisk sales of high-end phones, Korean phone makers LG and Samsung also controlled 30.6 percent of the world market ― the first time domestic brands have accounted for more than 30 percent. The increase is a 6 percentage point rise from 24.7 percent from a year ago, and came as Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Motorola lost market share
  • I got a raise of 100,000 W per month for next year

These companies are chaebol, family-controlled multinational corporations that rose during the 1960s as part of strongman-president Park Chung-hee's vision for bringing Korea's economy into the industrial era. Certain companies received preferential treatment from government and banks until what they call here "The IMF", AKA the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The weaknesses of the system were thrown into sharp focus, and theoretically the chaebol have emerged leaner and meaner as a result.

Trivia: LG does not stand for Life is Good, but for Lucky GoldStar, a combination of the original company name, Lak Hui, and GoldStar, its electronics subsidiary formed in the late 50s, which produced Korea's first radio.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

40 sec = 1 yr


One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.
The stills are shot with a Canon 400D and a Canon EF-S 10-22 lens @10mm
The audio was recorded with a Canon S2 IS and a Canon HF10.
The details: http://eirikso.com/2008/12/27/one-year-worth-of-images-give-some-amazing-videos/