Prices of vegetables jumped sharply in recent weeks due to heavy downpours that followed a long drought, industry sources said Wednesday. The price of napa cabbage soared 26.2 percent to 1,416 won ($1.2) per kilogram Tuesday from a month earlier, according to the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation. The price of spinach jumped 12.7 percent to 4,568 won per kilogram from 4,053 won, whi...

South Korea's national debt as measured in outstanding state bonds issued exceeded 950 trillion won ($826.2 billion) last month, mainly due to the government's expansionary fiscal policy to cope with an economic slowdown, data showed Wednesday. The conservative administrations of ex-Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye had favored the issuance of Treasury bills and various types of bonds t...

South Korean manufacturers' business sentiment reached the highest in over two years, but pessimism still outweighed optimism overall, a survey showed Wednesday. A survey of some 2,200 manufacturing firms put the business sentiment index at 94 in the third quarter, up five points from the second quarter but under the threshold of 100, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry said. The reading...

South Korea's foreign exchange reserves hit a record high in June due to a hike in the value of non-dollar currencies when converted into the U.S. greenback, central bank data showed Wednesday. As of the end of June, the country's foreign exchange reserves came to $380.57 billion, up $2.11 billion from the previous month, the Bank of Korea said in a statement. Foreign exchange reserves consist ...

The South Korean finance ministry said Tuesday that it tightened its monitoring of the local financial market following the latest missile launch by North Korea. After launching a ballistic missile earlier in the day, Pyongyang claimed in an official announcement that it has successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile directly challenging calls by the international community to...

The Moon Jae-in administration’s new comprehensive macroeconomic blueprint will be announced later this month, according to Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon on Tuesday. “The president, along with other officials, will hold a meeting to discuss the government‘s fiscal policies and strategies over the next five years sometime mid-July,” said the finance minister, during a policy meeting in Seoul wi...

Emerging markets should brace for signs of monetary policy shifts in developed nations, and South Korea will remain vigilant to such signs that are moving toward ending a decade of fiscal stimulus, Bank of Korea Gov. Lee Ju-yeol said Tuesday. “The massive amount of cash flow into global financial markets will be on the decrease at any rate,” Lee said, while presiding over a conference on economi...

Mortgage loans by those in their 20s and 30s have risen dramatically in the past 4 1/2 years, government data showed Tuesday, raising concerns of overdue payments. The average household whose head is in his 20s and 30s had 115 million won ($100,104) in mortgage loans last September, up 37.6 percent from 4 1/2 years earlier, according to figures by the Bank of Korea. Those in their 40s had 116 m...

President Moon Jae-in's policy advisory panel said Tuesday that the government will expand hiring of young people in the public sector, the latest in a series of efforts to create jobs. Currently, public companies and other public agencies are required by law to employ a set number of unemployed youths each year. The government will raise the mandatory ratio of hiring of unemployed youths in th...

South Korean financial firms have increased the number of foreign branches over the past five years, but such operations suffer from low profitability, the financial regulator said Tuesday. The number of overseas branches by local banks, credit card and other financial firms rose to 410 in 45 countries at the end of March this year, up 11 percent from the end of 2012, the Financial Supervisory S...