SEOUL, Nov. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Large South Korean companies’ ability to service their debts worsened sharply in the first nine months of this year due to plunging profits, a corporate tracker said Wednesday. The interest coverage ratio for 241 out of the country’s top 500 firms averaged 5.08 as of end-September, compared with 10.01 [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — Fewer South Koreans are filing for personal bankruptcy, with the notable exception of those in their 20s, the only age group for which bankruptcies are actually increasing. The Supreme Court reported to Rep. Kim Byung-wook that the number of personal bankruptcies among 20-somethings increased from 691 cases in 2015 [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — New data shows that wealthy South Koreans are more indebted than ever, meaning that so called “the rich getting richer” phenomenon in household debts is becoming ever more serious. It is estimated that the top income bracket borrowed additional money to purchase real estate, but higher housing prices led [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — The financial regulator said Friday it will encourage banks to provide mid-rate policy loans worth 1 trillion won (US$886 million) to desperate borrowers from next year, as part of ongoing efforts to relieve their debt burdens. About 3 million borrowers, who have no option but to borrow money from [...]
SEJONG, Dec. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — More than half of middle-aged South Koreans are in debt, government data showed Tuesday, in the latest sign of growing household debt in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. The data compiled by Statistics Korea showed that 55.2 percent of people, aged between 40 and 64, borrowed money from banks or other [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — The South Korean working poor are struggling from a vicious cycle of increasing debt, where interest and repayment fees reach as high as 12.56 million won each year, while disposable income is no more than 11 million won, on average. The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHSA) [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — The government has decided to acquire 480 billion won of debt incurred over 10 years ago by small business owners, of which most will be written off. Meanwhile, an additional 1 trillion won will be pumped into the “Make it Happen” loan program for small business owners, which was [...]
SEOUL, Jul. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea will lower the maximum legal lending rate to 24 percent from next year and strengthen supervision of private lenders, in a move to help ease financial burdens for desperate borrowers, the nation’s top financial regulator said Wednesday. Choi Jong-ku, the new chairman of the Financial Services Commission [...]
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 [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s short-term foreign debt rose 0.8 percent in 2016 from a year earlier, central bank data showed Wednesday. The country’s short-term external debt, with a maturity of one year or less, totaled US$105.2 billion as of the end of 2016, up $800 million from the end of 2015, [...]