KB Financial Group posted a net profit of 817 billion won ($776.9 million) for the second quarter, swinging back into the black after posting a 217 billion won loss in the same period last year. The group attributed the boost to lower loan-loss reserves and provisional cost cuts of more than one-third from a year ago.“The group has been reducing the allowance for bad debts for the past six months

  The president of South Korean broadcaster MBC offered to resign Friday over the government regulator's refusal to approve a planned merger of two regional stations, the broadcaster said.   Kim Jae-chul submitted a letter of resignation to MBC's largest shareholder, the Foundation for Broadcast Culture, the company said.   The resignation was "to take responsibility for the Korea Communications C

South Korea’s top automaker Hyundai Motor Co. said Thursday that its large passenger car Equus has received the highest marks in a U.S. customer satisfaction survey, outshining BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz.The luxury sedan received 904 points out of a maximum 1,000 in the Associates Automotive Performance Execution and Layout survey by J.D. Power and Associates on new car owners from February throu

The free trade accord between South Korea and Peru will take effect on Aug. 1, paving the way for the two countries’ trade and investment to increase sharply, the trade Ministry in Seoul said Wednesday.“The free trade deal with Peru will contribute to bolstering trade and investment and promoting cooperation in resources development. We expect that the trade pact will help South Korea expand into

Major South Korean companies are set to recruit more employees in the second half of the year than a year earlier as the economy is on a solid growth path, a poll said Wednesday.According to the joint survey by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Incruit, a local online job placement portal, 338 companies plan to hire a combined 17,361 employees in the July-December period, up 1.7 perce

South Korea’s top regulator said Wednesday that the watchdog plans to conduct stricter stress tests on local banks’ foreign currency liquidity conditions in a bid to shield the country from a potential financial crisis.Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Kwon Hyouk-se said the financial watchdog plans to make stress tests based on the second-quarter FX liquidity data by taking into account various

The number of cattle in South Korea hit a record high in June and is expected to grow further for a couple of years, helping stabilize beef prices, the government said Tuesday. The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said that the country had 3.05 million heads of hanwoo beef cows as of last month, up 4.5 percent from a year earlier and the largest ever. Despite 110,883 heads of

South Korea will produce vaccines for foot-and-mouth disease next year to protect livestock after the country suffered the worst outbreak of the disease earlier this year, a government agency said Tuesday.The Animal, Plant and Fisheries Quarantine and Inspection Agency said it plans to import FMD antigens from foreign vaccine manufacturers and get local companies to learn production knowhow so the

South Korean student Hwang Jin-Joo no longer sends text messages to his extensive circle of friends, he “KaTalks” them.Kakao Talk, a mobile messenger smartphone application, has enjoyed phenomenal success since it was launched 16 months ago and has spawned similar apps in the world’s most wired nation.“Almost everyone I know uses the service, and it’s so economical that now I can’t imagine how I’d

HONG KONG (Yonhap News) ― U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that the country’s free trade deal with South Korea is a “model agreement” for the world’s largest economy.The Korea-U.S. FTA, known as KORUS FTA, was signed in 2007 and supplemented last December. It has been awaiting approval from the legislatures of both countries. “We consider KORUS a model agreement,” Clinton said i

Samsung Electronics Co., maker of the Galaxy mobile phone, may have surpassed Nokia Oyj and Apple Inc. in smartphone sales for the first time on demand for devices that run on Android software, a research company said. Samsung is estimated to have sold between 18 million and 21 million smartphones globally in the April-June quarter, compared with 16.7 million for Nokia and 20.3 million iPhones, Ne