SEOUL, Sept. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Daily credit card spending in South Korea continued to climb in the first half on increased online purchases, central bank data showed Monday. Credit card holders spent an average 1.9 trillion won (US$1.57 billion) a day in the January-June period, up 5.7 percent from a year earlier, according to [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — Debt recovery applications are spreading among vulnerable members of the population including retired seniors, business owners, day laborers, and the jobless. The Credit Counselling & Recovery Service reported that 4,910 small business owners had applied for debt recovery this year as of July. The number of applications decreased between [...]
SEOUL, Apr. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — The Hana Institute of Finance, a research unit of Hana Financial Group Inc., has suggested in its “Report on the Retirement Life of South Korean National Pensioners” published on Monday that nearly half of the recipients of the national pension plan see a 50 percent drop in their purchasing [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — There is at least one industry in South Korea where hardly a day goes by without financial authorities mentioning deregulation: financial technology, or fintech. Since the National Assembly passed bills last September on a “regulatory sandbox,” in which fintech firms are allowed to experiment under amicable regulations, state regulators [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — The polarization of the South Korean economy has been accelerating ever since the country was stricken by the so-called IMF Crisis in 1997, which led to the introduction of neoliberal policies. The income gap among households has further widened over the last 20 years and is now ranked as [...]
SEJONG, Mar. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s tax agency said Thursday that it has launched probes into 95 rich people to see if they attempted to avoid paying taxes. The National Tax Service said the latest crackdown includes 37 owners of medium-sized companies, 10 people with vast real estate holdings and 48 high-income people, [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — “Wealthy households” in South Korea spent nearly four times more per month than the national average, a report showed Wednesday. According to the 2019 Korean Wealth Report issued by KEB Hana bank, households that owned more than 1 billion won (US$898,500) worth of financial assets spent an average of [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — South Koreans’ financial literacy was slightly lower than the average of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries last year, a survey showed Monday. The financial literacy of South Korean people aged between 18 and 79 came to 62.2 points in 2018, according to the survey by the Bank of Korea [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — About 60 percent of South Koreans say that advertisements for financial products are exaggerated, a survey showed Wednesday, underscoring customers’ mistrust towards the sector as a whole. The survey, conducted by Gallup Korea and commissioned by the Financial Services Commission (FSC), showed that 60.7 percent of the 2,194 respondents [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Seoul citizens’ debt load has increased by 90 trillion won (US$79.9 billion) over a seven-year period starting in 2010, a municipal think tank said Friday, calling attention to the liabilities of marginal households. The Seoul Institute, affiliated with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, said in a report that six out [...]