The South Korean stock market is likely to trade flat this week despite abated woes from Scotland and the U.S. Federal Reserve, due to lack of growth momentum compounded by Hyundai Motor’s plunge on the main bourse, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index climbed 0.58 percent from the previous week to close at 2,053.82 on Friday.Seoul shares lost ground earlier last week on weak economic data from China, the country’s No. 1 trading partner. Beijing’s data showed the country

Incheon Asian Games Organizing Committee president Kim Young-soo said he hoped that the Games would become recognized as the most successful sporting event in South Korean history.Although there have been difficulties including budget cuts, the IAGOC has worked to make the Games different from past events and entertaining for all Asians. Aiming to raise the Asian Games to a new level, the IAGOC aspires to host a Games at which athletes can display their full potential and participants can enjoy

Hyundai Motor, South Korea’s largest automaker, has won the bid for Korea Electric Power Corp.’s office property in the affluent Gangnam district of Seoul, the state-run power distributor said.KEPCO said Hyundai Motor’s consortium offered the highest bid of 10.5 trillion won ($10 billion) for its 80,000-square-meter site, beating rival bidder Samsung Electronics. The consortium consisted of Hyundai Motor’s affiliates Kia Motors and Hyundai Mobis.Hyundai Motor welcomed the announcement, saying th

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics said Thursday it has launched mass production of 20 nano-class mobile dynamic random access memory for the first time in the industry, six months after it successfully started manufacturing PC DRAMs of the same level.The 6-gigabit double data rate-3, or DDR3 modules based on 20-nanometer technology will allow the mobile DRAM to boast a data transmission speed of 2,133Mb per second, while significantly lowering power consumption for better efficiency, t

South Korean refiners reduced imports of crude oil from Iraq on-year in July when the Middle East country became mired in internal conflict, while increasing crude imports from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, data showed Thursday.South Korea imported 5.36 million barrels of Iraq crude oil in July, down 40.3 percent from 8.99 million barrels a year ago and 13.9 percent from 6.23 million barrels in June, according to the data by the state-run Korea National Oil Corp.By company, GS Caltex bought 4.36 milli

The board of KB Financial Group is expected to meet again Friday to discuss follow-up measures after dismissing the group’s chairman who is accused of a series of management lapses but refuses to step down. After hours of talks Wednesday that ended close to midnight, the board said it decided to dismiss Lim Young-rok. The board on Monday had recommended that he resign voluntarily, but Lim sued the regulating agencies who punished him in defiance, reasserting his innocence. The board will meet ag

The National Pension Service, South Korea’s pension fund manager, should stop playing safe by investing in low-yielding bonds, a notable Korean economist said.Instead, it should be a little more aggressive by seeking riskier assets overseas to secure “medium returns, if not high returns,” through investment diversification, he said. Otherwise, the country’s pension fund will soon run dry up for people who are depending on it after retirement.“It is time for the NPS to move on to investing in ass

The economic value created by South Korea’s four largest conglomerates reached 140.2 trillion won ($135.8 billion) in 2013, accounting for 9.7 percent of the country’s GDP, a report by a corporate research firm said Wednesday.According to CEO Score, analyses based on audits submitted to the state financial regulator last year showed Samsung Group, the country’s No. 1 family-run conglomerate with 19 listed companies, generated economic value worth 68.37 trillion won, or 4.7 percent of the GDP.Thi

This year marks the 130th anniversary of the adoption of modern postal services on the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of the state-run mail service provider Korea Post.Over the years, technological advancements such as the Internet and smart gadgets have changed the way people and industries communicate and have opened up new transnational business opportunities.While these changes serve as a grave threat to traditional postal services, they also offer the postal industry a chance to inn

A United Nations agency for information and telecommunications will discuss the allocation of a global radio frequency for air-ground satellite communication following the failure of a painstaking multinational search to find a missing Malaysian airplane, government officials said Wednesday. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Technology said the International Telecommunications Union will first address the issue when senior officials and experts gather for a conference to be held in the Sou

South Korea and China will hold what they hope will be the last round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement next week, the South Korean trade ministry said Wednesday.The talks, slated from Monday through Friday in Beijing, will be the fifth this year. The two countries had planned on four rounds of negotiations.The trade agreement talks got a hard push in July when South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on joint efforts to conclude the FTA wit

Kia Motors’ all-new Sorento offers a sedan-like refined ride with a responsive driving experience that should give the carmaker a competitive edge in the global SUV market.The vehicle, lengthened by 95 millimeters bumper to bumper compared to the previous generation model, has better structural rigidity thanks to extensive use of high tensile steel and industrial adhesives in its construction.Its wheelbase, another factor that improves ride quality and passenger comfort, has grown 80 mm, with th

The South Korean government announced plans Wednesday to transform the country’s aging industrial complexes into advanced, attractive workplaces, especially for the younger working generation.To this end, the government and private companies will together raise a total of 1.2 trillion won ($1.16 billion) to create an “industrial complex innovation fund” that will be used to improve working and living conditions at industrial complexes, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.The

South Korea’s state-run power provider Korea Electric Power Corp. said Tuesday that it will wrap up the bidding process for its main office property in southern Seoul this week and announce the new owner of the prime piece of real estate estimated to be worth over 3.33 trillion won ($3.22 billion).KEPCO said bids will be accepted until 4 p.m. Wednesday, with the winner to be announced at 10 a.m. the following day. It said the party that submits the highest bidding price will be selected.The land

LG Electronics, South Korea’s No. 2 maker of handsets, provided a teaser Tuesday of what looks to be its first flip-style smartphone. LG’s website showed a dim image of a flip-style handset dubbed the “LG Wine Smart.” If released, the Wine lineup will become the oldest existing handset brand in South Korea.First launched in 2007, LG’s Wine series has been one of the key brands in the local handset market. The latest model, Wine Phone 5, came out in April 2012 and ran on the second-generation net

Samsung Group’s de-facto head Lee Kun-hee, who has been hospitalized due to a heart attack since May, saw the value of his share holdings in the conglomerate plunge 7.19 percent from four months earlier, data showed Tuesday, with the decline led by Samsung Electronics’ lackluster performance.Lee’s holdings came to 10.6 trillion won ($10.2 billion) as of Friday, compared to the 11.5 trillion won posted on May 31, the data compiled by market tracker FnGuide showed. Along with smaller shares in oth

Many South Korean conglomerates will likely add the same number of employees or boost their hiring slightly in 2014 compared to the year before, a poll carried out by the lobbying group of large businesses showed Tuesday. According to the Federation of Korean Industries survey carried out on the top 300 large businesses in terms of sales, 52.9 percent said they will hire the same number of workers as in 2013, with 15.1 percent saying they will increase hiring.It said while 68 percent of companie

South Korea’s current economic slowdown is not a “temporary” phenomenon affected by cyclical factors but by complicated structural problems, the finance minister said Tuesday, worrying that the economy might take the road of Japan’s lost decades “if we do not respond in a timely manner.” Meeting with foreign journalists to explain Seoul’s economic policy measures that his team has taken since mid-July, Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan reaffirmed that the government will implement expansionary ma

The chief of South Korea’s central bank on Tuesday raised worries that a weakening yen may hurt local exporters, reiterating the currency issue that he addressed earlier this month.BOK Gov. Lee Ju-yeol told lawmakers that additional easing by central banks in the European Union and Japan may add further pressure on the won-yen exchange rate, eroding the competitiveness of exporters.“Despite the weakening yen, there have not yet been many difficulties (for Korean firms). The weakening yen has boo

South Korean companies are expected to report weaker-than-expected earnings for the third quarter as Samsung Electronics, which wields enormous sway over the country’s overall corporate earnings chart, is likely to suffer another earnings shock and low oil prices hurt local refiners’ bottom lines, the latest data showed Tuesday.The operating profit estimate for 173 listed companies was reduced by 3.7 percent for the July-September period to 30.77 trillion won ($29.65 billion) as of Friday from a