Financial authorities said Wednesday it has punished the chiefs of the nation’s three largest local credit raters over illegally allowing employees to engage in both sales and running credit assessments.The sanctioned chiefs include Yoon In-sub of Korea Rating, Cho Wang-ha of Korea Investors Service Inc., and Lee Sang-kwon of NICE Investors Service Co.The three were banned from engaging in the financial sector for three years, said officials from the Financial Supervisory Service.The officials s

Japan Tobacco International Korea rolled out Mevius LSS Option Evo1, the latest brand from its flagship Mevius lineup, on Tuesday in a bid to increase its presence in the local market for super-slim cigarettes. JTI said the Mevius LSS Option Evo1 had the same distinctive flavor as the rest of the products in the LSS special series. The product also includes a purple capsule inserted into each cigarette to reduce the amount of smoke and smell it gives off, according to the tobacco maker. The Mevi

Korea’s two mega hydro management projects will raise the global recognition of the country’s advanced agricultural development skills, the Korea Rural Community Corp. said Sunday.Through the state-led Saemangeum development and reclamation plan and Yeongsangang River project, the nation aims at bolstering sustainable growth by elevating environment-friendly development skills to the top practice of futuristic government projects. Saemangeum on the west coast in North Jeolla Province boasts the

Korea Rural Community Corp. vowed on Sunday to strengthen preemptive measures to secure sufficient agricultural water in drought-affected regions, seeking to raise the country’s food security. The state-run firm has shielded the Korean farmers for the past 107 years since its launch in 1908 by providing clean water for agriculture. The KRC manages about 58 percent of the nation’s agricultural water management system.The history of the KRC closely resonates with Korea’s agricultural modernization

The Bank of Korea revised down its domestic economic growth projection for 2015 on Thursday, while keeping its key base rate unchanged at 1.75 percent for April. The central bank lowered this year’s growth forecast to 3.1 percent from 3.4 percent, showing a large gap from the Finance Ministry’s forecast of 3.8 percent. The 0.3 percent reduction is mostly attributed to sluggish growth in the first quarter, as the strong won undermined Korean exports and rising household debt swayed domestic consu

The country’s major conglomerates created fewer jobs last year in a reflection of the lackluster economy, market research firm CEO Score reported Wednesday. The firm, which specializes in chaebol data, revealed that 274 subsidiaries of the top 30 conglomerates, including LG, Hyundai, Samsung and SK, recruited just over 1 million employees as of late 2014, down 0.3 percent from a year ago. Last year’s hiring accounted for only a 1.3 percent rise in the total number of employees. “It is very worri

The government is planning to lessen the financial burden of low-income households by slashing the interest rate on microfinance products. The Financial Services Commission, the country’s financial regulator, said Monday that it is seeking measures to lower the interest rate on several trademark loan products for young adults and the low-income households, such as Smile Microcredit Program, Sunshine Loan and New Hope Loans. The plan aims at helping the low-income debtors, who borrowed money from

Critics claim financial regulators have been negligent in cracking down on the excessively high or illicit lending rates for low-income earners charged by private moneylenders. Regulators recently instructed first-tier commercial banks to offer lower interest rates to homeowners.Though the average rate on mortgages or housing-collateralized loans ranged between 3 and 5 percent, some middle- and high-income households can access lower rates due to the government’s effort to revitalize sagging pro

The total number of loans by the Bank of Korea hit the highest level in 21 years in February, as more loans were approved to local companies for facility investment, data showed Wednesday. Loans provided through BOK’s money issuance reached 15.4 trillion won ($13.9 billion) as of the end of February, up 66.5 percent from a year ago, according to the BOK report.The level of loan issuance marks the highest since July 1994 when it reached 15.6 trillion won, excluding inflationary factors. Since the

Philip Morris Korea has rolled out Marlboro Zing Fusion, the latest brand from its flagship Marlboro lineup, in Korea on Wednesday. “In addition to Marlboro’s signature smooth taste, the capsule-inserted cigarette exudes a distinctive note of refreshing MixballTM capsule,” the Korean operation of the world’s largest tobacco maker said.  Marlboro Zing FusionBefore this, the company launched a number of brands in the Marlboro Fresh category, including Marlboro Ice Blast and Marlboro Hybrid, target

South Korea’s household mortgage debt more than tripled in the first quarter of this year, compared with the same period a year ago, according to data by the banking sector and the Financial Supervisory Service.Mortgage debt hit 323.5 trillion won at the end of March, up more than 7 trillion won from 316.5 trillion won at the end of last year, according to data from seven local commercial lenders.This marks the first time the increase has reached over 7 trillion won, further raising concerns ove

The government said Monday that it would accelerate the launch of the country’s biggest tech cluster in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, to develop the area into a Korean version of Silicon Valley. Government ministries agreed to lift the greenbelt development restrictions on the area by the end of this year, six months ahead of the initial schedule. To meet the December deadline, the ministries are pushing to submit the master development plan for the Pangyo Creative Economy Valley and file for state

Local governments are considering increasing the charges for services such as public transport and water supply, saying that central government price controls have aggravated their financial difficulties.The Seoul Metropolitan Government is considering raising subway and bus fares by between 200 won and 500 won in the first half of this year. Late last year, the local government paved the way for the increase, as it passed a revised ordinance saying that the public transportation fares could be

This is the second in a four-part series featuring IBK’s support for cultural content. ― Ed.Film director Frank Capra once said that movies were one of the three universal languages, along with mathematics and music. Great films bring all walks of life into a common pool of fun and ethos, to enrich the modern times. Myung Films, too, has sought to produce great films with both fun and ethos, which can bring together cinemagoers at home and abroad. Bold themes, an efficient production system and

The new head of the Financial Services Commission called for “bold and speedy” financial reform on Wednesday, expecting to receive the first batch of reform plans as early as next month. “We will either find a way or make one,” said FSC Chairman Yim Jong-yong, quoting Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, at the first meeting of a nongovernmental council for financial reform.“We need a broad plan for reform that encompasses the financial and the nonfinancial sectors, such as foreign currenci

The government and some state-run companies were more than 1,200 trillion won ($1.1 trillion) in the red as of last year, with government debt growing almost twice as fast as a year earlier, central bank data revealed Tuesday.The debt, borrowed by the central and local governments and nonfinancial state-run firms, tallied 1,208.8 trillion won at the end of 2014, up 76.3 trillion won, or 6.7 percent, year-on-year, the Bank of Korea reported.  Of the total debt, the governments’ debt grew about 9.

The number of employees who work less than 18 hours a week has reached a record-high 1.2 million, reflecting the widespread concerns about employment and job security, government data revealed Monday. The working hours of these part-timers is on average two to three hours a day, which is far shorter than the average for nonregular workers, Statistics Korea reported. The short duration part-time workers rose to 1.20 million in January-February, up 2.6 percent from the same period last year of 1.1

The national financial regulator will strengthen risk management over the land- and commercial building-backed mortgage loans, seeking to control the country’s snowballing household debt, its top official said.New Financial Services Commission chairman Yim Jong-yong said in the weekly working-level meeting on Friday that the regulator would “make precise analyses of the household debt conditions, as if performing an MRI.” “We are planning on more active management on the land- and commercial bui

Global financial leaders and experts will gather in Busan next week to discuss developing finance and boosting trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Korean Finance Ministry said Wednesday. The Annual Meeting of the Boards of Governors of Inter-American Development Bank and Inter-American Investment Corporation, cohosted by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, will run for four days from March 26 at BEXCO. Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan, who concurrently serves as deputy prime

Financial corporations were found to have the highest entertainment expenses among all industries in 2013, the tax collector reported on Monday.Analysts said the results indicate that the financial industry could be hurt most by the new anticorruption bill set to take effect in October next year.In 2013, the country’s 18,518 financial firms, including insurers, banks and brokerages, spent a total of 750 billion won ($661.7 million) as “entertainment spending,” including expenditure on gifts, mea