Local egg prices still are high despite the arrival of eggs imported from Thailand following the latest outbreak of bird flu, data showed Tuesday. The Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade said a carton of 30 eggs was priced at an average 7,969 won ($6.94) as of Monday, up slightly from last month. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, 970,000 eggs imported from the Sout...

Korea has seen foreign direct investment slump and investments by local companies abroad balloon over the past few years. According to data from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Korean firms’ investments overseas amounted to $276.1 billion for a decade through 2016, nearly tripling $94.7 billion invested by foreign businesses in the nation over the same period. Last year alone, Korea...

Drivers who are less at fault for a car accident, will pay lower auto insurance premiums in a change from the current system, the financial regulator said Monday. The change, which will go into effect from September, is aimed at adjusting the degree of balance between at-fault drivers and those who are much less responsible for an accident after reporting the case to an insurance firm to get com...

Home purchases are becoming increasingly unaffordable and prices and loan interest rates have reached their highest level in four year and three months, the Korea Housing-Finance Corp. announced Monday. In the first quarter of this year, the Korea-Housing Affordability Index rose to 59.3, a 0.4 percentage point increase compared to the previous quarter, according to data. The figure marks the ...

More corporate CEOs are becoming less optimistic about the immediate future of the global economy compared with last year, an international survey said Monday. The poll carried out by consulting firm KPMG International said that out of 1,261 CEOs from 10 countries who were canvassed between Feb. 21 and April 11 this year, 65 percent were confident about global economic growth for the next three ...

The head of South Korea's antitrust watchdog said Monday that he will strengthen the enforcement of fair trade laws by expanding civil actions against rule-breaking companies. "I will introduce a system that will allow multiple economic players to enforce trade rules at the same time," Fair Trade Commission Chairman Kim Sang-jo said in a conference held in Seoul. "I will make efforts to get trad...

The number of foreign cruise tourists visiting South Korea has declined sharply in recent months, government data showed Monday, amid a diplomatic row with China over the deployment of a US anti-missile system. China has been banning package tours to South Korea since March as part of its economic retaliation against South Korea over the THAAD deployment, which Beijing considers a security threa...

Rising home prices and loan interest rates have made houses the least affordable in over four years, the latest data showed Monday. According to the Korea Housing-Finance, the Korea-housing affordability index rose to 58.9 in the first three months of the year, up 0.4 percentage point from the previous quarter. This is the highest since the fourth quarter of 2012, when the index stood at 59.9. ...

Korea's state-run pension fund has increased its holdings in three spinoff companies of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., data provided by a local market research showed Sunday. According to FnGuide Inc., the National Pension Service held a stake of more than 5 percent in 277 companies as of late last week. Of companies that the pension fund has large stakes in, 17 were added in the second quarter ...

South Korean companies’ high hopes were struck down following President Moon Jae-in’s Thursday meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as the two countries failed to strike an accord to cease China’s unofficial economic retaliation against South Korean companies regarding the controversial deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. Korea’s relationship with China has hit its lowe...

South Korea’s rapidly aging population could become a hurdle to economic growth in the near future, according to economists at the Bank of Korea. According to central bank’s data, the number of South Koreans over 65 accounted for 12.8 percent of the population in 2015 and that figure is projected to grow to 28.7 percent by 2035 and 42.5 percent by 2065. As the economically active population fal...

Japanese bank Nomura Holdings joined several global investment banks on Friday in raising South Korea's economic growth forecast for this year. Kwon Young-sun, a chief economist at Nomura, upgraded South Korea's economic growth rate for this year to 2.7 percent from its previous forecast of 2.4 percent, citing improving exports and construction investment. However, South Korea's economy is like...

South Korea's central bank is expected to hold its key rates steady this month as it could move to "normalize" interest in early 2018, Moody's Analytics said Friday. The Bank of Korea is set to hold its rate-review session next Thursday to decide whether to keep or adjust the all-time low rate of 1.25 percent. "The central bank is in no hurry to raise rates with core inflation only gradually cr...

Citibank Korea, the South Korean unit of Citigroup, began shutting down five physical branches in the country Friday, as part of its plan to reorganize its operations, according to an industry source. Citibank has said it will drastically cut the number of its physical branches to 25 from 126 but claimed that it will not lay off employees. Five branches of Citibank in Seoul and Gyeonggi Provinc...