SEOUL, Nov. 20 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s customs authorities on Thursday announced plans to reduce paperwork requirements and speed up the customs clearance process for imports, a move aimed at lessening regulatory burdens on local businesses. Under a revised law currently undergoing administrative notice, procedures for re-importing returned goods will be simplified, according to [...]
SEJONG, Nov. 19 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of family members serving as unregistered executives at family-run conglomerates, or chaebol, has increased, raising concerns about a growing gap between authority and accountability, the antitrust regulator said Wednesday. Since 2010, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has reviewed and released annual reports on the ownership and governance [...]
SEJONG, Nov. 19 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s finance minister said Wednesday that signs of an economic rebound are becoming increasingly evident, pointing to aggressive fiscal spending and more targeted policy management as key drivers. At a meeting of economy-related ministers in Sejong, Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol said consumer spending has begun to strengthen, helped [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s medical community is escalating its confrontation with the Lee Jae-myung administration and the National Assembly over a set of health-care policy proposals that physicians argue threaten patient safety and undermine established medical standards. At the center of the dispute are three initiatives: mandatory ingredient-based prescriptions, stricter oversight of [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) on Monday launched a new centralized platform designed to bring unprecedented transparency to financial interactions between pharmaceutical and medical device companies and healthcare professionals. The “Expense Report Management System,” formally opening Nov. 17, is the country’s first unified public database allowing [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea plans to impose stricter disclosure requirements on listed companies’ executive compensation and expand access to shareholder voting information, in a move aimed at improving market transparency and strengthening investor rights, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) announced Sunday. Under the reform package — titled Measures to Improve Corporate Disclosure [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) – Culture Minister Chae Hwi-young has said the government will deploy every measure permitted under law to block plans for ultra-high-rise buildings facing Jongmyo Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage site in central Seoul. The project has drawn controversy because Jongmyo, a 14th-century royal ancestral shrine from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 16 (Korea Bizwire) – Applications for vouchers provided to pregnant women increased 8.1 percent from a year earlier in the first nine months of this year, data showed Sunday, in a possible sign of a continued rebound in the number of newborns in a country facing one of the world’s lowest birth rates. [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea and the United States have agreed to accelerate long-stalled efforts to transfer wartime operational control (OPCON) to Seoul, a move that aligns with President Lee Jae-myung’s pledge to complete the transition before the end of his term in 2030. The commitment was included in a joint fact sheet [...]
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – The United States has formally endorsed South Korea’s long-standing ambition to build nuclear-powered submarines and expressed support for Seoul’s push to acquire civil uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing capabilities, according to a joint fact sheet released Thursday. The document, issued by the White House, summarizes the outcomes of two [...]