President Moon Jae-in’s pledge to usher in an “era of zero irregular jobs” in the public sector within his five-year term has raised concerns about the possible negative effects of the initiative. According to a government-run information portal, irregular employees numbered 144,205, or 33.6 percent of the total workforce, at 335 public organizations as of end-March. But Moon, who took office o...

The ratio of South Korea's short-term foreign debt to its foreign reserves hit the highest level in more than a year in the first quarter on increased foreign investment in local bonds, data showed Wednesday. The country's short-term external debt -- with a maturity of one year or less -- totaled $115.4 billion as of the end of March, up $10.2 billion from three months earlier, according to the ...

Moody’s Investors Service cut its rating on China’s debt, saying that the outlook for the country’s financial strength will worsen as debt rises and economic growth slows. Moody’s reduced the rating to A1 from Aa3 and changed the outlook to stable from negative, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The offshore yuan extended losses after Moody’s downgrade, weakening 0.12 percent to 6.8...

South Korea's growing household debt and geopolitical risks are two major systemic risks facing the country's financial system, a survey showed Wednesday. Household debt topped the list of key systemic risks cited by market watchers at 85 percent, compared to 70 percent in October, according to the semi-annual survey conducted by the Bank of Korea. South Korea's household debt reached a record ...

The average investment return on government-operated public funds dropped sharply from a year earlier in 2016 due largely to a fall in bond yields, the finance ministry said Tuesday. The average yields of 38 government funds came to 1.79 percent last year, compared with 2.36 percent the previous year, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. The ministry said the on-year drop was most...

A local trade organization recommended Tuesday that South Korea should pursue free trade agreements with South African countries, Uzbekistan and Cote d'Ivoire, citing their market scale and trade conditions. The Korea International Trade Association said it assessed the market size, growth potential, level of trade barriers, access to resources, exports competitiveness and state risks in determi...

The combined net profit of insurance firms in South Korea for the first quarter of this year jumped 24.4 percent on-year, thanks to a hefty gain in their dividend income, government data showed Tuesday. Insurance firms saw their combined net profit rise by 544.2 billion won ($487 million) to 2.7 trillion won for the January-March period, according to the data by the Financial Supervisory Service...

South Korea has recouped 67.9 percent of the public funds it sunk into ailing financial firms since the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, the financial regulator said Tuesday. The quarterly retrieval rate rose 0.1 percentage point at the end of March, the Financial Services Commission said in a statement. During the January-March period, the government recouped 165.3 billion won, including 133....

The combined assets of South Korea’s four leading conglomerates Samsung, Hyundai, SK and LG reached 864.9 trillion won ($774.3 billion) last year, up 33.5 percent from 647.6 trillion won in 2011. The proportion of these four groups in terms of total assets among the top 30 conglomerates in Korea also rose by 3.5 percentage points from 49.1 percent in 2011 to 52.7 percent.

Debate is heating up here on whether and how to reshape the government’s trade bodies to cope with mounting external pressures. During his campaign, President Moon Jae-in vowed to transfer the trade functions of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He said the decision by his predecessor Park Geun-hye to remove trade functions from the Foreign Ministry ...

More than 17 percent of state financing projects were rated as "poor" in the latest efficiency assessment this year, the finance ministry said Monday. Out of 1,415 projects worth a combined 116.1 trillion won ($103.9 billion) run by 50 government ministries and agencies in 2017, 249 schemes received the lowest grade, with 238 plans appraised as "excellent," according to the Ministry of Strategy ...

South Korean pensioners find it difficult to live only on monthly payments from the state pension scheme as the amount comes to less than a quarter of their pre-retirement income, a government report said Monday. The state pension's so-called income replacement ratio for South Koreans aged 65 or older with an average subscription period of 23.8 years amounts to 23.9 percent, according to the rep...

More than 10 percent of full-time workers in South Korea consider themselves as nonregular employees because of poor working conditions, a report said Monday. According to the report by the Korea Labor Institute, 10.7 percent of South Korea's regular workers believe they are temporary employees owing to long work hours and low pay. Kim Ki-hong, a researcher at the think tank, authored the repor...

South Korean companies listed on the country's main stock market saw their debt ratio inch up in the first quarter of this year from three months earlier, data showed Monday. The debt-to-equity ratio of the 725 listed companies, which close their books in December, came to 116.8 percent at the end of March, up 1.77 percentage points from the end of December, according to the data by the Korea Ex...

South Korea's producer prices rose for a sixth straight month in April on rising oil and raw material prices, central bank data showed Monday. The producer price index -- a barometer of future consumer inflation -- reached 102.58 in April, up 4.0 percent from a year earlier, according to the preliminary data from the Bank of Korea. The BOK attributed the hike to an increase in oil and raw mater...