CJ CheilJedang, Korea’s largest food company, was slapped with 340 million won ($316,000) in fines for interrupting the corporate watchdog’s probe into alleged price-fixing activities, the Fair Trade Commission said Wednesday. The fine is the largest single penalty imposed for unlawful interference in an investigation by the watchdog. The FTC said it is seeking to punish five workers at the compan

The number of Koreans aged 100 or more has almost doubled since 2005 under the country’s improved medical services, Statistics Korea said Tuesday.The number of centenarians numbered 1,836 in November, posting a 9.1 percent increase from 961 in 2005, the state agency reported in its census report compiled every five years.The number of females in the group, 1,580, exceeded their male counterparts,

Charges on imports dropped on shortage items as prices soarThe government plans to extend tariff cuts for 35 out of 46 items due to expire this month and add 14 more items to the list to ease import cost burdens on local consumers, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.Under the plan, items such as pork, garlic, mackerel, wheat, soybean oil, sugar, and coffee will continue to enjoy lower tariffs. The

Credit rating agency Fitch noted the rising short-term external debt held by Korean banks in recent months, but said its portion relative to overall external debt was still sustainable.“The South Korean government has been trying to reduce the industry’s short-term external debt but the level is back on the rise,” Andrew Colquhoun, Fitch’s head of Asia Pacific sovereign ratings, said in an intervi

Local bank’s exposure to debt-burdened Greece tops $500 billion but it poses limited impact on the local financial market even in the case of a default, financial authorities said Sunday. The Financial Supervisory Service said the bonds issued by Greek shipping companies were not so large here as of the end of March. The agency did not disclose a bank-by-bank breakdown of the figure but emphasized

IMF, Finance Ministry split on focus of capital control measuresKorea should raise its policy rate faster to discourage volatile capital inflows into stocks and boost the effectiveness of capital barriers currently in place, Subir Lall, Internaional Monetary Fund's Mission Chief for Korea said.The head of the IMF delegation here assessed Korea’s capital flow management “effective,” but said more c

Kia’s MorningAuto Build, the world’s most circulated car magazine from Germany, selected Kia’s Morning as the best compact car in the world, The Hyundai Kia Automotive Group said.In a comparative analysis of the world’s compact cars, the magazine selected Kia’s latest version of Morning city car as the best model for driving comfort, followed by Hyundai’s i10.Other candidate models included Fiat P

 

GM Chevrolet cars featured on “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”GM Korea Co. is offering customers an opportunity to apply to watch a pre-screening of “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in advance of its opening to the Korean public, the company said. The third installment of Michael Bay’s Hollywood blockbuster will be available for pre-screening by Monday June 20 on Chevrolet’s event website at www.e

Marketing chief says new SM7 beats rivals, firm recovering from Japan quake impactThe revamped SM7, to be released within three months, will be successful in the country’s upper largesized sedan market with its improved driving comfort, Frederic Artaud, marketing chief at Renault Samsung, predicted Sunday. “As showcased and proved at the Seoul Motor Show 2011, Renault Samsung is highly confident o

Tax agency finds 1.8 trillion won of foreign funds invested in local stocksThe National Tax Service is pushing for a discussion with Swiss tax authorities to widen the scope of information sharing needed to crack down on alleged tax dodging by overseas Koreans with bank accounts there.The agency was confirmed to have found more than 1.8 trillion won ($1.64 billion) of foreign funds invested in loc

Report says tax agency found evidence of illicit ‘round trips’ of funds to SwitzerlandThe National Tax Service has detected an illegal flow of funds in the form of roundtrip investment from private bank accounts in Switzerland, local news reports said Wednesday.Tax authorities in Switzerland are said to have returned 5 percent of the dividend tax or 5.8 billion won ($5.3 million) on the foreign fu

Emerging markets will experience continued capital inflow into the region regardless of the expiration of the second round of quantitative easing in the U.S., Robert Rubin, former secretary of the U.S. treasury said in Seoul on Wednesday.“There is a tremendously strong orientation now toward emerging market countries in the investment world. And that has nothing to do with the end of QE2,” Rubin s

Korea Aerospace Industries on Wednesday announced its expansion plan to become the comprehensive aircraft manufacturing company, with details to go public at the end of this month.“KAI is the country’s only comprehensive producer of aircraft materials since it was merged with Samsung Daewoo and Hyundai’s aircraft sectors in October 1999,” president Kim Hong-kyung told reporters at a news conferenc

Trend is likely to continue, hurting economic competitiveness Core productiveThe most productive workforce aged between 25 and 49 has begun shrinking for the first time in recorded history, data showed on Tuesday, marking a trend likely to continue and weigh down on competitiveness of the economy.The Statistics Korea said the core productive population stood at 19.54 million as of end-2010, down 3

Deploying an industry wide business ethics program for bankers and regulators is imperative to uproot irregularities and cut long-held collusive ties, the chief Asia economist at HIS Global Insight said in Seoul on Tuesday.“Ethics need to be taught and shared among peer groups. Professionals above graduate level often have never had chances to train themselves on what is right and wrong in specifi

The portion of the workforce in their 50s has frequently exceeded that in their 30s in the past two years, as the country quickly becomes an aging society.Statistics Korea said Monday that the number of baby boomers working in their 50s had exceeded the number of workers in their 30s four times since October 2009, when the older group outnumbered the younger workers for the first time. The proport

The United States urged South Korea to press on Iran sanctions during a meeting of senior financial officials from the two countries Friday, a Seoul official said.Undersecretary David Cohen of the U.S. Treasury Department met Deputy Minister Choi Jong-ku of the South Korean Finance Ministry at the ministry building in Gwacheon, south of Seoul.The United States, along with the International Atomic

Central bank expects 3.9% inflation and 4.5% growth this yearThe Bank of Korea on Friday raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point to 3.25 percent, surprising the market that expected another rate freeze to accommodate slowing exports and surging debt burdens on households. The monetary policy committee at the central bank lifted the seven day repurchase rate for the third t

Finance minister urges all-out efforts to curb pricesThe government’s inflation fight appears to be losing its grip on energy, service and staple food prices set to rise further on uncertainties abroad.The inter-ministerial efforts to fight food inflation such as cutting food tariff and increasing crop supplies in the past few months have largely been offset by increase in import costs.Public util