SEOUL, Jan. 24 (Korea Bizwire) – Global rating agency Standard & Poor’s said Wednesday it has raised the outlook for South Korea’s growth rate to 2.8 percent this year from its previous forecast of 2.55 percent, citing the global economic recovery and rising exports of South Korean goods. The Bank of Korea (BOK) said last week that South Korea’s gross [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on January 24 that before the end of the year it would downgrade the importance of the public key certificate, a widely used personal identification tool in South Korea, by essentially removing the word “public” and turning it into a security system [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — The amount of crowdfunding in South Korea soared about 60 percent last year, data showed Wednesday, signaling the platform grew as an effective financing option for startups. According to the data by the Financial Services Commission (FSC), 183 companies raised a combined 27.8 billion won (US$25.9 million) last year, [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — Unions in the South Korean banking sector are demanding a position on the board of directors to better represent themselves with management. According to sources close to the banking industry, an increasing number of financial institutions including KB Financial Group, Shinhan Bank and Woori Bank are addressing calls from labor [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — Six South Korean banks will begin issuing new trading accounts for cryptocurrencies next week by introducing a system that bans the use of anonymous accounts in cryptocurrency transactions, a senior financial regulator said Tuesday. When the banks introduce the system of verifying cryptocurrency investors’ identification next Tuesday, current virtual [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — With cryptocurrency valuations having plummeted since reaching record highs only weeks ago, online communities for investors have degenerated from optimism and high spirits to, evidenced by uploaded photos of cracked monitors and ruined doors, bitterness and destructive behavior. Whether the damage wrought in these photos was truly caused by [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — The amount of stock sales through block deals on South Korean bourses increased sharply in 2017 from a year earlier, the Korea Exchange (KRX) said Monday. The amount surged to 55.9 trillion won (US$52.3 billion) on the KOSPI main bourse last year, up 37 percent from the previous year. [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — The government said Monday it will collect up to 24.2 percent of corporate and local income taxes from South Korea’s cryptocurrency exchanges this year. The Seoul government has been striving to rein in the virtual currency frenzy in Asia’s fourth-largest economy while contemplating a bill to ban cryptocurrency exchanges. [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s top financial regulator said Sunday that it will tighten capital regulations on high-risk household lending, in the latest move meant to slow the pace of household debt growth. The stricter regulations will be applied to banks, savings banks and insurance firms that provide loans to home buyers [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — The government plans to require cryptocurrency exchanges to share users’ transaction data with banks, in a potential move to impose taxes on the transactions, an official at financial authorities said Sunday. Currently, financial authorities ban banks from offering virtual accounts, which are needed to sell or buy cryptocurrencies, to [...]