SEOUL, Dec. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea will exempt a wider range of low-risk recyclable materials from mandatory import insurance requirements, a move aimed at securing recycling inputs and accelerating the country’s transition to a circular economy, the government said Monday. The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment announced that it will revise enforcement [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — China has surpassed South Korea and Japan in four of the five major manufacturing industries that anchor global trade, underscoring a structural shift in East Asia’s industrial balance and intensifying pressure on Seoul to move beyond volume-driven exports, a new report shows. According to a study released Tuesday by the [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Jae-yong retained the top spot among South Korea’s stock-rich individuals, with his equity holdings increasing sharply over the past year amid a strong rally in the local stock market, industry data showed Wednesday. The top 100 shareholders of listed companies held shares worth a [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s financial watchdog on Monday unveiled an ambitious roadmap to overhaul consumer protection, signaling a shift away from after-the-fact remedies toward preemptive intervention across the life cycle of financial products. The Financial Supervisory Service said it aims to make 2025 a “foundational year” for substantive consumer protection by embedding [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s financial watchdog warned on Monday that bonus systems at banks and other financial institutions remain overly focused on short-term performance, even as incentive pay surged more than 30 percent last year. The Financial Supervisory Service said total performance-based compensation paid to employees at financial companies reached 1.396 trillion [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — As soaring prices and rising gold costs strain household budgets, South Korea’s long-standing tradition of lavish first-birthday celebrations for infants, known as doljanchi, is steadily giving way to smaller, more private observances. Once marked by banquet halls, elaborate ceremonial tables and gold rings given as gifts, doljanchi has increasingly been [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s used-car exports surged sharply this year, helping offset a slowdown in new vehicle shipments and preventing an overall decline in the country’s automotive exports, according to government and industry data released Sunday. From January through November, used-car exports reached $8.4 billion, up 82.6 percent from a year earlier, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly seven in ten individual investors in South Korea earned profits from stock trading this year, buoyed by gains in large-cap shares despite continued volatility in the broader market, according to data released Thursday. An analysis by Shinhan Securities of domestic stock transactions from January through November found that 67 [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Increased liquidity is not the sole factor behind the recent surge in housing prices in the Seoul metropolitan area or the weakness of the local currency, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said Tuesday, stressing that monetary policy alone is not sufficient to fully control an increase in loans. In [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean companies’ earnings recorded a 20 percent on-year gain in 2024 on increased exports of semiconductors, government data showed Tuesday. The combined before-tax net profit of South Korean companies reached 181.9 trillion won (US$123.9 billion) last year, up 20.6 percent from 150.8 trillion won tallied in 2023, according [...]