SEOUL, June 29 (Korea Bizwire) – Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, appears to have entered a phase of extinction due to low birthrates and superaging population, becoming the nation’s first metropolitan city to do so, said a research paper published on Friday. The paper from the Korea Employment Information Service estimated Busan’s ratio of the [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 26 (Korea Bizwire) – As Naver Webtoon prepares for its Nasdaq listing, the company has set its initial public offering (IPO) price, catapulting its valuation to around 3.7 trillion won. This development marks a significant milestone for the digital comics industry, challenging the long-held notion that “webtoons can’t make money.” Webtoon Entertainment, the North [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 26 (Korea Bizwire) – Samsung Electronics announced on June 27 that it has partnered with KB Kookmin Card to introduce an innovative Internet of Things (IoT) credit card, leveraging low-energy Bluetooth (BLE) technology and Samsung’s SmartThings Find service. SmartThings Find is a specialized service that allows users to locate various Samsung devices, including Galaxy [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Online comics company Webtoon Entertainment Inc., owned by South Korea’s top internet platform, Naver, has set a price of US$21 per share, the top of its pricing range, for its plan to list itself on the U.S. stock market, as it seeks to become a “Disney in Asia.” In [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s business sentiment improved for a fourth consecutive month in July amid a steady recovery in exports, which offsets a slowdown in private spending, a central bank poll showed Thursday. Local companies’ business sentiment index (BSI) stood at 93.1 for the coming month, up from 91.8 the previous [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said Wednesday it will take longer for the people to feel a recent economic recovery due mainly to still-high interest rates and inflation, vowing policy priority on supporting small businesses and other vulnerable classes. Choi made the remarks during an economy-related ministers’ meeting in Seoul, [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — The financial regulator said Tuesday that the planned implementation of stricter rules on household loans will be postponed until the start of September amid various risk factors facing the financial market. The country was originally set to implement a second phase formula for floating rate stress debt service ratio [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — Internet-only lender Kakao Bank launched a new dollar deposit service Tuesday that can be linked with the online payment platform Travel Wallet to enable fee-free overseas cash withdrawals. The new program, called “Dollar Box,” allows any Kakao Bank customer aged 19 years old or older to open one account [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – Nearly 170 employees of banks and other financial firms embezzled around 180 billion won combined (US$122.21 million) over the past six years, but less than 10 percent has been retrieved, data showed Sunday. According to the data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), a total of 168 officials from [...]
SEOUL, June 21 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign currency deposits declined for the fifth straight month in May as companies withdrew part of U.S. dollar-denominated deposits amid the weakening won and to settle imports, central bank data showed Friday. Residents’ outstanding foreign currency-denominated deposits reached US$88.96 billion at end-May, down $2.39 billion from the previous month, [...]