Winners and losers

Hyundai Motor Group

, Korea’s largest automotive maker that recently suffered from deteriorating management-labor relations, had some good news last week.

The number of vehicles manufactured at Hyundai Motor’s Czech plant for the European market surpassed 1 million. The plant that officially opened in September 2008 began producing the compact i30 hatchback in November that year. More than half of the vehicles produced there are i30s.

In the U.S., the Hyundai Genesis sedan received the highest score in the near-luxury car segment in the 2013 Total Quality Awards by automotive research body Strategic Vision. Kia Motors’ Soul was also ranked first in the small multi-function vehicle segment, outperforming the Volkswagen Golf.

In China, the number of YF Sonatas sold surpassed 200,000 last month. The popular mid-size sedan was launched there in April 2011.

Ssangyong Motor

resumed its night-shift production last Monday at its plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. Night-shift production is necessary when there is high demand, so it is a positive sign that the company, which is now owned by Indian automotive maker Mahindra & Mahindra, is back on track.

Interpark

, a comprehensive online shopping mall, saw its operating profit jump 166.3 percent to 10.7 billion won in the first quarter.

A string of large corporations posted losses in the first quarter last week.

Standard Chartered Bank Korea

posted a net profit of 95.7 billion won in the first quarter — down 30.8 percent from a year ago. The net profit of

Citibank

’s Korean operation also dropped 36.7 percent from the first quarter of 2012 to 57.2 billion won.

LG

, the holding company of LG Group, also posted a 36.5 percent decrease in the first quarter’s operating profit at 204.7 billion won.