SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s online shopping site operators continued to report operating losses last year from a year earlier, as more market competition hurt their profitability, regulatory data showed Friday. Coupang Inc. suffered a combined operating loss of 560 billion won (US$490.8 million) in the January-December period of 2016 compared with [...]
SEOUL, April 12 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s household loans extended by local banks rose 10 percent in March from a year earlier due to increased mortgages, central bank data showed Wednesday. Outstanding household loans from local lenders came to 713.9 trillion won (US$621 billion) as of end-March, compared with 649 trillion won from a [...]
SEOUL, April 12 (Korea Bizwire) – The won’s movement against the dollar widened slightly in March from a month earlier, central bank data showed Wednesday. The session-over-session changes in the dollar-won exchange rate averaged 0.47 percent last month, compared to 0.39 in February, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said. “The won rose against the dollar [...]
SEOUL, April 11 (Korea Bizwire) – A majority of South Korean manufacturing companies expect their business conditions to improve in the second quarter of the year amid signs of a recovery in exports, a poll showed Tuesday. According to the survey of 645 manufacturers conducted by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET), [...]
SEOUL, April 10 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign investment banks (IBs) have raised their outlook on South Korea’s economic growth for this year, citing a sound recovery in exports, a report showed Sunday. The average growth estimate by 10 IBs including Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Nomura stood at an annual 2.5 percent at the end of [...]
SEOUL, April 6 (Korea Bizwire) – Moody’s Investors Service said Thursday it will maintain the current ratings for Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. despite sharp declines in auto sales in China. “Although Hyundai’s and Kia’s weak auto unit shipments from China will likely have a short-term negative impact on their profitability and cash [...]
SEOUL, April 6 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s state pension fund, one of the key debt holders for ailing Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., said Thursday it remains undecided on whether to agree on debt rescheduling measures that aim to keep the shipyard afloat. The National Pension Service (NPS), which holds about 30 percent [...]
SEJONG, April 6 (Korea Bizwire) – The South Korean economy has been seeing a modest recovery in recent months on the back of improvement in investment and exports, a state-run think tank said Thursday. “The Korean economy continued to grow at a moderate pace on improving investment and exports,” the Korea Development Institute (KDI) said [...]
SEOUL, April 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Yesterday marked the official launch of South Korea’s very first online-only bank, K Bank, and more than 20,000 new customers have already signed up to open new accounts. On the day the bank launched its service, nearly 15,320 internet-only bank accounts were opened by three in the afternoon, surpassing [...]
SEOUL, April 3 (Korea Bizwire) – The Korea Institute of Finance suggested Sunday that drastically reducing household debt could shrink consumption, raising a dilemma for those crafting South Korean economic policy to combat the struggle to cope with soaring debt and waning domestic consumption. According to researcher Park Choon-sung in his report on household debt [...]