Singer and actress IU has purchased a high-end villa unit in Cheongdam-dong, a posh district in Seoul, for 13 billion won ($11.7 million) in cash, according to news reports Wednesday. The singer bought a residential unit of Eterno Cheongdam, currently under construction by Hyundai Engineering & Construction, according to local news outlet Biz.Hankook. The 20-story villa with four floors underground has one or two residential units on each floor starting from the second floor above ground.

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Korbit has launched a nonfungible token trading platform for the first time in the local crypto sector, the company said Monday. An NFT is a unit of data on a blockchain and represents ownership of unique digital items, such as images, sound files or text. An NFT contains data of the ownership history and the original author. As it offers royalty to the original author every time the asset is traded, the NFT technology is being increasingly utilized in the

The South Korean government has thrown its weight behind plans to build exascale supercomputers by 2030 and nurture local talents in the sector, the finance minister said Friday. Exascale computing, a computer system that performs 1 quintillion operations per second, enables superspeed data analyses and simulations at that will pave the way for crucial discoveries in a wide range of fields, from finding new drugs against COVID-19 to predicting effects of climate change. The government plans

Toss Securities, an online brokerage firm owned by fintech firm Viva Republica, said Friday that the number of stock trading accounts on its platform has surpassed 3 million. The 3 million accounts amount to around 30 percent of 9.14 million individual investors in the nation. Launched on Feb. 3, the company attracted new customers by running a series of promotional events. More than 1.7 million new customers joined the Toss platform during a five-day event in February that handed each new c

An upward trend for apartment prices in Seoul has continued for 40 weeks in a row, since last June, according to the state-run Korean Real Estate Board on Thursday. Market experts say unstoppable apartment price increases in Gangnam have driven the growth, inflating home prices in other regions in and around Seoul. The rate of increase stayed between 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent during most of the second half last year, and this year it increased from 0.06 percent in the first week of January

Millennium Hilton Seoul, a five-star hotel in the middle of Seoul, is reportedly in talks with asset manager Igis Asset Management to sell its luxury establishment for 1 trillion won ($891.2 million), local media reported Tuesday. CDL Hotel Korea, a Korean branch of Singaporean investment company City Developments Limited and the largest shareholder of Millennium Hilton, is planning to let Igis take over the hotel to turn it into an office building, local economic newspaper the Korea Economic

Average monthly rent in South Korea jumped more than 6 percent in the first three months of the year due to an increasing number of people switching from long-term jeonse contracts to monthly rentals, according to the nation’s statistics agency Statistics Korea on Monday. Households, including single-person ones, paid 328,000 won ($291) on average for rent in the first quarter, up from 308,000 won in the same period last year. Of the 7,200 households surveyed by the agency, 19.9 percent

Some major South Korean financial conglomerates, including KB and Hana, have decided not to issue real-name bank accounts for virtual coin trading on local crypto exchanges, citing heavy accountability and hacking risks, according to news reports Sunday. A new bill passed at the National Assembly in March requires local crypto exchanges to meet anti-money laundering requirements, and utilize real-name bank accounts from commercial banks for crypto trading. Local banks also need to decide by th

The planned redevelopment of Jwawon Shopping Center, the first mixed-use building in Seoul, has cleared another hurdle as state developer Korea Land & Housing Corporation was chosen to lead the project, local media reported on Thursday. Built in 1966 in Seodaemun-gu, the structure consists of retail shops and offices on lower floors and apartments on the top floor. Although it was graded with one of the lowest scores in a safety evaluation in March, which qualifies the dilapidated buildi

This is a part of a series of reports, analyses and interviews on the cryptocurrency market and its future. This is the first installment. -- Ed. After the crypto market crashed in 2018, Lee Ji-hoon, a 35-year-old office worker, kept his distance. But amid the recent market frenzy surrounding cryptocurrencies, Lee felt the urge to reopen an account he had nearly forgotten about for three years. As soon as the account was reopened at Bithumb’s offline customer center last week, he was i

Team Blind, the operator of anonymous social network platform Blind, has raised $37 million won in its latest funding round, picking up the pace to go public in the US stock market, the company said on Tuesday. Blind has more than 5 million users who spend an average of 40 minutes a day. In Korea, 85 percent of employees working for companies with 300 workers or more have joined the social media. In the US, the platform is often used as a venue to discuss workplace topics, such as job openi

The Seoullo 7017, a city park built along a former highway overpass, is an inviting spot for a refreshing night walk, offering the chance to recall the beauty of the city’s nightscape that has almost been forgotten due to the lingering pandemic and its impact on evening activities. Lights installed in the huge plant pots and small bulbs placed among the greenery light up the pathway at night, making visitors to feel walking among the stars. The park also uses the facade of Seoul Squ

Lee Jae-yong, the only son of the late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee, has become the wealthiest entrepreneur in South Korea, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Thursday. The index shows a ranking of 500 richest people around the world. The list of the world’s top billionaires, compiled by media firm Bloomberg, showed the junior Lee owns $12.6 billion of assets as of May 12 to take the 170th spot among the 500 richest people. He inherited shares of Samsung Group affiliat

Global ratings firm Moody’s has kept the credit rating of South Korea at Aa2, affirming the outlook at stable, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance on Wednesday. The US rating firm holds discussions with the ministry and the state-run Bank of Korea on a regular basis before annoucing a credit rating report for the nation The rating agency cited the nation’s strong economic fundamentals, and quick economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic as some of the reasons

Global ratings firm Moody’s raised its rating outlook for South Korean securities firm Mirae Asset Securities from negative to stable, forecasting that regulatory measures by the financial authorities will likely curb the growth of the company’s risky assets. “The change from negative to stable takes into account Moody’s expectation of slower risk asset growth as a result of various prudential regulatory measures implemented by the Korean Financial Supervisory Service

South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday said that the government’s efforts for the past four years have fallen short of cooling down the heated real estate market. His remarks come after the government rolled out more than 20 sets of real estate regulations to rein in the overheated property market for the past years.　 “Real estate is one of the issues that I wish I had solved in the past four years,” said President Moon, in a media interview to mark his fourth year in

Dunamu, an operator of cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, said Thursday that it will spend 10 billion won ($8.9 million) to set up a unit to protect crypto coin investors. The planned launch of the in-house unit, tentatively named Upbit protection center for digital asset investors, is part of the company’s efforts to join the environment, social and governance trend, which has been gaining traction worldwide recently. In addition to the establishment of the investor protection center this ye

Cryptocurrencies have been rallying again with some digital coins, like Dogecoin and Ethereum, hitting record highs recently. The prices of coins tumbled last month as governments around the world hinted that they would strengthen regulations on cryptocurrencies, which have no intrinsic value. Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, spiked to an all-time high of 4,527,000 won ($4,038) on Tuesday, up 7.12 percent, according to local crypto exchange Upbit The European Inv

South Korea’s main bourse Kospi could reach 4,035 points if the local market is bumped up into the MSCI World Index, which represents large and mid-cap equity performance across 24 developed nations, a local think tank said Tuesday. The Korea Economic Research Institute predicted that the inclusion, one step up from its current listing as an emerging market, would help the stock market see an inflow of foreign investments, amounting to up to 61.1 trillion won ($54.5 billion). The inclu

This is the first installment of a series of interviews with South Korea’s leading investors and strategists, and analyses of their insights on markets and future investment. -- Ed. Mirae Asset Financial Group Chairman Park Hyun-joo and his empire, one of South Korea’s largest asset management firms, were on a roller coaster ride last year as the group backed out of large acquisition deals and fought a series of lawsuits. Just six months before the pandemic hit the global market,