North Korean leader Kim Jong-il toured a hydro-electric power station in eastern Siberia on Sunday in the second day of his trip to Russia, diplomatic sources said.   Kim's trip to the Bureiskaya hydro-electric power station in the Amur region fueled speculation that the two countrie

Hana Financial Group Inc., South Korea’s No. 4 banking group, will be able to know whether it can buy Korea Exchange Bank as early as next month, when a Seoul court rules on a pending court case that has stalled the acquisition, sources said Sunday.Under a 4.41 trillion won ($4.07 billion) deal with

Domestic gold prices set a fresh record high again on Saturday on increased demand for safer assets amid concerns over a slowdown in the U.S. economy and lingering debt problems in Europe, industry sources said.The retail price of 1 don (3.75 grams) of pure gold in the country stood at an all-time h

South Korean household food expenditures grew at the fastest clip ever in the second quarter amid record-high spending on car fuel, stoked by runaway food and energy costs, data showed Sunday.Household spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages jumped 8.9 percent on-year to a monthly average of 32

Seoul National University professor Kim Rando advises Korea’s youth to face up to reality and believe in the possibilities of their future in his 42 short essays for the younger generation.Rando gives advice to those feeling lonely and uneasy about their future and urges them to make a miracle in th

Professor Kim Rando stresses discovering true potential and pursuing dreamsKim Rando, professor of consumer studies at Seoul National University, calls himself a consumer scientist.His current research focus is on the Chinese consumers, and he plans to publish a book on the subject next year. But Ki

The global news media industry is faced with a make-or-break upheaval that revolves around the shift in focus toward online and mobile platforms. Over the past couple of years, newspaper companies around the world have lost their readers to online and mobile rivals.The past year was a remarkable one

South Korea’s financial authorities said Friday they were weighing options to stem stock market volatility in response to growing concerns over foreign “hot money” that allegedly exaggerates the market’s moves. The local regulators’ latest gesture to stabilize the local stock market came after they

Lee Kun-hee speculated to focus on faltering memory spot businessSamsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest memory chip maker, and eighth-ranked Hynix Semiconductor Inc. are bracing for a steeper price plunge in memory chip prices. Nomura Securities issued a report Friday that the majority of chip

South Korean stocks closed 1.33 percent lower Friday on continued foreign selling as rosy U.S. jobs data failed to boost weak investor sentiment, analysts said. The local currency gained ground against the U.S. dollar.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) slumped 24.13 points to 1,

Officials concerned about greater volatility from structural problemsOpenness in financial markets is supposedly a positive thing. But this rule does not exactly apply to Korea’s “open” stock market that has been fluctuating in a way deemed more volatile than that of its peers in Asia and elsewhere.

Dimmer U.S. economic outlook, rising inflation at home still pose riskAs the U.S. Federal Reserve pledged to keep its benchmark interest rate at near zero through mid-2013 helping Wall Street to stage a rebound Tuesday, investors in Seoul also seemed less nervous. Still, a bigger question remains: W

Korea Exchange Bank, South Korea’s No. 5 lender, said Wednesday that its second-quarter earnings jumped more than eight times from a year earlier on a one-off profit from the sale of a stake in a local builder and improved interest margins.Net income amounted to 1.13 trillion won ($1.05 billion) in

For Korea’s baby boomer generation, post-retirement plans usually revolve around real estate investments. But this longstanding strategy, which relied solely on a continuously booming housing market, is being reconsidered as apartment prices remain in a protracted slump. Baby boomers here, many

The historic downgrade of the U.S. credit rating late Friday and subsequent mass sell-off in equity markets around the world have threatened to hamper Korea’s economic growth, leaving few options for the central bank in its scheduled policy-setting meeting this week.Standard & Poor’s downgraded the

As the twin crises in the U.S. and Europe send global equity markets plunging, investors are seeking safer destinations, particularly bonds, in South Korea.The Bank of Korea said in a report on Tuesday that the yield on three-year Treasury bonds saw a drop of 30 basis points between Aug. 2-8 as inve

Stocks plunge; stronger won against U.S. dollar feared to hurt exportersFears of potential fallout from the U.S. credit downgrade quickly materialized in a Korean stock freefall on Monday. The drop reflected the panicky sentiment among local investors amid growing concerns about the overall Korean e

A massive hacking incident that hammered SK Communications, which runs popular social network site Cyworld and the third-ranked portal Nate.com, is now exposing additional security loopholes at other IT companies. Police said the ESTsoft server might have been used by a hacker who stole the personal

Fears of a new financial crisis stoked by last week’s market turmoilFor South Korea, where memories of two major financial upheavals in the late 1990s and 2008 are fresh, the dramatic nosedive of the Seoul bourse on Friday raised investor fears of a third financial crisis.The pattern was eerily fami

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s top memory chipmaker, increased its NAND flash market dominance in the second quarter, widening its gap with the runner-up Toshiba Corp., industry data showed Wednesday. But prices of NAND flash memory chips, which are used to store data in portable devices such