SEOUL, April 10 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea and the World Economic Forum (WEF) will study ways to set up a sister center to the WEF’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and work together on related research activities, Seoul’s chief economic policymaker said Tuesday. “We proposed working together for the establishment of a new [...]
SEOUL, Apr. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s financial regulator on Monday launched a special inspection into Samsung Securities Co. over the brokerage’s “fat-finger” trading chaos after it paid windfall stocks to its employees as dividends. Under an employee stock ownership plan, Samsung Securities had been planning to pay cash dividends of 1,000 won (US$0.93) [...]
SEOUL, April 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Newly married couples and young people will be eligible to get rental houses at rates lower than market prices starting in July, the government said Wednesday. The measure comes as the government is pushing forward various “housing welfare” programs to benefit newlyweds and others starting off in life. The government will provide 170,000 rental homes [...]
SEOUL, Apr. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s cryptocurrency exchange operators reaped huge profits in 2017 on the back of the national frenzy over digital money, data showed Wednesday. The annual turnover of BTC Korea.com, which is in charge of local cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb, stood at 333.4 billion won (US$315.6 million) in 2017, up a [...]
SEOUL, April 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Private spending in South Korea fell to a record low last year amid gloomy employment prospects and rapid population aging. The ratio of private spending to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) reached 48.1 percent in 2017, down 0.6 percentage points from a year ago, the lowest since records began [...]
SEOUL, Apr. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Elliott Advisors Ltd., a unit of U.S. activist hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., said Wednesday it has acquired more than US$1 billion worth of stocks in three major affiliates of Hyundai Motor Group, and asked for more efforts to improve corporate governance by the group. The three affiliates are [...]
SEOUL, Apr. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Local banks reduced their workforces and branch offices last year by the greatest number since 2000, with digitalization-driven downsizing accelerating, data from the financial regulator showed Sunday. The number of employees in the banking sector at the end of last year totaled 111,173, down 3,602 from the previous year, [...]
SEOUL, March 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Overseas branches of South Korean banks saw their combined net profit rise 23.9 percent on-year to US$807 million in 2017, thanks to a decline in loan-loss provisions, government data showed Tuesday. The total accounted for 7.7 percent of the combined net profit of banks operating in South Korea last [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – South Koreans who are in their 20s and 30s are familiar with cryptocurrencies and willing to invest in them amid the recent craze for the new type of digital money, a survey showed Tuesday. Some 21.6 percent of 2,511 respondents said they are conscious of cryptocurrencies, with the number soaring to [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — The organizers of the PyeongChang Olympics were able to economize nearly 500 million won thanks to mobile meal vouchers. Up to 500,000 meals worth 3.5 billion won were purchased via the digital meal vouchers during the 60 days around the Winter Games, Vendys, the startup company behind the money-saving idea, [...]