South Korean retail investors are trading some popular US leveraged securities without access to real-time quotes during daytime hours, after Blue Ocean ATS suspended trading in 18 securities to comply with US Securities and Exchange Commission rules. The suspension took effect with Monday’s 8 p.m. ET session, Blue Ocean ATS said. Most of the affected securities are leveraged or inverse products, including the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares, known as SOXL, and the Direxion Daily MSC

Woori Financial Group Chairman Yim Jong-ryong and 55 other senior executives have purchased company shares as the group expands its nonbanking operations and integrates its two life insurers. Yim bought 5,000 shares Aug. 24, shortly after Woori Financial completed its acquisition of Dongyang Life Insurance and announced plans to merge it with ABL Life Insurance, the company said Wednesday. The shares were purchased at 31,800 won ($23.26) apiece, bringing Yim's holdings to 15,000 shares. The othe

Backlash over leveraged exchange-traded funds has the Financial Services Commission treading more cautiously on further capital market reforms, putting two planned market initiatives at risk of delay. The Korea Exchange’s fractional investment market, scheduled to open in November, is increasingly likely to be postponed, according to financial industry sources Tuesday. Nextrade’s plan to begin after-hours ETF trading this year has also stalled. Industry officials said the regulator is reassessin

Bank of Korea Gov. Shin Hyun-song said the won had become more resilient to external shocks and that South Korea’s planned investment in the United States should have a manageable impact on the currency. “We have gained some control over the exchange rate and are well prepared for whatever shocks may come,” Shin told reporters Friday after attending the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Wyoming for the first time as BOK governor. He cited the BOK’s recent preemptive rate increase and poi

South Korea’s First Vice Finance Minister Lee Hyung-il was nominated Sunday as deputy prime minister and minister of finance and economy, placing a veteran technocrat with deep experience in macroeconomic policy at the helm of the country’s economy. Born in Daegu in 1971, Lee studied economics at Seoul National University and earned a doctorate from Texas A&M University. He entered public service in 1993 after passing the national civil service examination. At the Finance Ministry, Lee held key

J.P. Morgan Asset Management says Korea must turn its semiconductor-led surge into a broader “Korea rally” to attract foreign capital that stays beyond the memory cycle. “A trigger for more durable inflows would be evidence of broader earnings growth across non-memory tech, industrials, financials and consumer. In other words, a ‘Korea rally’ rather than a ‘memory rally,’ along with a wider uplift in turnover,” Alexander Treves, managing director at J.P. Morgan Asset Management and head of inves

South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT on Thursday released detailed scores from the second-phase evaluation of its Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project. The detailed results were released at the request of Motif Technologies, which was eliminated in the second phase, with the consent of the other shortlisted teams. SK Telecom ranked first with 70.6 points overall in the second-phase evaluation, followed by Upstage with 69.9 points, LG AI Research Institute with 69 points and Motif Technolog

Korea Investment Management and Korea Investment Value Asset Management are pursuing a spinoff merger. The two companies said in regulatory filings Thursday that their boards had separately approved a merger agreement. Under the agreement, Korea Investment Management will spin off its securities fund and money market fund businesses and merge them into Korea Investment Value Asset Management. The companies plan to hold an extraordinary general meeting on Sept. 11 to approve the spinoff merger. T

The number of suspected illegal short selling cases reported to South Korea’s financial regulator has risen steadily in recent years, as a new system allows authorities to monitor institutional investors’ short selling activity in real time. The increase has been driven in part by the launch of its naked short selling detection system, known as NSDS, but market watchers say authorities should move faster to investigate cases, impose sanctions and recover illicit gains. The Financial Supervisory

South Korean investors’ deposits fell below 100 trillion won ($72.4 billion) again, while margin debt, a measure of leveraged investing, climbed back above 33 trillion won. Investor deposits stood at 98.92 trillion won as of Wednesday, down 3.62 trillion won from the previous session, according to the Korea Financial Investment Association. It was the first time deposits had fallen below 100 trillion won in two weeks, since Aug. 12, when they stood at 99.98 trillion won. The deposits had risen a

Mirae Asset Financial Group Chairman Park Hyeon-joo rejects criticism that disappointing shareholder returns are weighing on Samsung Electronics and SK hynix shares, arguing that investment and corporate fundamentals matter more. “Saying a stock falls because the company does not pay enough dividends is a weak argument,” Park said Wednesday at a dinner with employees of Digital X, formerly Korbit, Korea’s first cryptocurrency exchange acquired and renamed by Mirae Asset Securities in July. “What

South Korea wants to move another wave of public institutions out of the capital region. But unions representing financial regulators and policy bodies warn that decentralization could slow crisis response, weaken oversight and drive skilled employees out. The dispute is intensifying as the government prepares the second phase of its decadeslong effort to spread jobs and economic activity beyond Seoul. A road map initially expected in September may now come in October or November, as the governm

Foreign investors pulled sharply out of South Korean equities in July, with UK investors leading a massive stock sell-off even as US investors remained net buyers, data showed Friday. According to data released by the Financial Supervisory Service, foreign investors net sold 31.7 trillion ($22.9 billion) won worth of listed stocks in July, extending their net-selling streak to seven months. Foreign selling was concentrated on the country's main bourse Kospi, with investors net selling 30.8 trill

Kakao Mobility has moved closer to a potential US stock market debut after reportedly filing confidential IPO documents with US regulators, in a listing expected to raise about $1 billion and provide an exit for its second-largest shareholder, TPG. Citing a report by capital markets publication IFR, IPO market data provider IPOX said Thursday that Kakao Mobility submitted a draft registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June. Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and UBS

South Korea still has a long way to go to eliminate the Korea discount, with the National Pension Service positioned to drive the next phase of corporate governance reform, governance specialist Park Yoo-kyung said. Park spent 17 years overseeing responsible investment and corporate governance in the Asia-Pacific region at APG, the asset manager for Dutch pension fund ABP. She currently serves as a board member and audit committee chair at the Tara Climate Foundation. She has also been nominated