Kakao Bank, the second online-only bank in the country set to start its services in June, has joined the Korea Federation of Banks. The KFB said Monday that Kakao Bank had become the 22nd banking institution under the federation Friday. All commercial banks in operation in South Korea are members of the KFB, which gathers views from the banking sector and submits them to the parliament or financ...

South Korean shares breached the 2,300-point mark for the first time ever as foreign investors scooped up major tech stocks amid sound corporate earnings, bucking overnight gains on Wall Street, analysts said. The Korean won sharply rose against the US dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index added 15.55 points, or 0.68 percent, to an all-time high of 2,304.03. Trade volume was s...

Following his nomination by President Moon Jae-in on Sunday as deputy prime minister for the economy and finance minister, Kim Dong-yeon said his main objectives will be to revitalize the country’s lagging economy by increasing the effective tax rate and adding more jobs. “I think the next five years will be our last chance to save the economy,” Kim said during a press conference at the Governme...

South Korean banks and credit card firms might face difficulty in raising their fees, as the financial authorities began reviewing President Moon Jae-in’s pledges to adopt a new regulation to toughen rules on financial fees, industry sources said Monday. Moon, who believes in big government and its larger role in the market, had vowed to “adopt a system to evaluate the legitimacy of financial fe...

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 ...

South Korean shares traded higher late Monday morning as foreigners scooped up shares of large tech companies, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index gained 12.12 points, or 0.53 percent, to 2,300.6 as of 11:20 a.m. The broad index opened higher but soon paired earlier gains as institutional buyers turned to a selling mode. Market behemoth Samsung Electronics gained 0.7...

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...

South Korean stocks opened higher on Monday, buoyed by bullish tech large caps, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index climbed 15 points, or 0.66 percent, to reach 2,303.48 in the first 15 minutes of trading. Big tech shares pushed up the market, although large-cap stocks were mixed across the board. Market behemoth Samsung Electronics gained more than 1.3 percent, with...

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...

President Moon Jae-in’s chaebol reform drive became even more clear on Sunday as he named a longtime activist for shareholders’ rights and transparent corporate governance as the chief of the staff for policy, a position he revived for swift changes on overall economic policies. Jang Ha-sung, a business professor at Korea University, is “the right person,” to shift an outdated socio-economic par...

South Korea‘s exports recorded the fastest quarter growth among the world’s leading exporting countries with its first quarter revenue totaling $132.3 billion, up 14.9 percent from the same period last year, according to data from the World Trade Organization on Sunday. Despite a decline in world trade over the past two years, Korea’s exports have recovered rapidly, jumping from the No. 8 spot l...