South Korean banks are likely to tighten their grip on fresh loans in the third quarter of the year amid tougher lending rules and rising household credit risks due to the coronavirus pandemic, a central bank poll showed Monday. The Bank of Korea said its index measuring the banks' attitude toward fresh lending stood at minus 3 for the July-September period, compared with 7 for the previous quarter. The lower the reading, the more likely banks will tighten their restrictions on lending. A read

Registration for preliminary presidential candidates opened Monday, kicking off what appears to be one of the most crowded presidential races in the nation's history. The National Election Commission (NEC) began the seven-month early registration period for candidates hoping to run in the March 9 election to pick a successor to President Moon Jae-in, whose term ends on May 9. Registrants are allowed to conduct limited campaign activities ahead of an official registration set for mid-February.

Eight members of the South Korean football club Seongnam FC have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, putting the resumption of their season next week in jeopardy. Seongnam and the Korea Professional Football League (K League) said Monday that two players and five staff members received positive results earlier in the day, hours after one of their coaches tested positive late Sunday. Seongnam said 31 players and 15 staffers were tested, and two are expected to get their results Tuesday.

SsangYong Motor Co. said Monday its employees began to take unpaid leave in rotation as part of self-help measures. Last month, SsangYong workers agreed to the company's offer of two-year rotational unpaid leave for 4,700 employees, an extension of a cut in wages and suspended welfare benefits until June 2023. In the first year through June 2022, 50 percent of assembly line workers in the Pyeongtaek plant, 70 kilometers south of Seoul, and 30 percent of office workers will take turns going on

Four more newly enlisted soldiers have tested positive for the new coronavirus, bringing the total of recent infections at an Army boot camp to 88, the defense ministry said Monday. The enlistees at the Korea Army Training Center have been in isolation since last week after the center reported a cluster infection amid a new wave of COVID-19 infections across the country. The authorities have conducted virus tests on all camp members and carried out contact tracing, according to the ministry.

With the first half of the 2021 Major League Baseball (MLB) in the books, two South Korean pitchers have built some momentum for the remainder of the season, while two position players from the country will look to stay in the postseason hunt. MLB will enter the All-Star break following the conclusion of games Sunday in the US (local time). Two South Korean starters, Ryu Hyun-jin of the Toronto Blue Jays and Kim Kwang-hyun of the St. Louis Cardinals, both won their final starts of the first hal

Marvel Studios' latest movie "Black Widow" smashed the weekend box office in South Korea, surpassing a cumulative 1 million admissions in its first week of release, despite a new wave of coronavirus infections, data showed Monday. The superhero blockbuster attracted 984,000 people over the Friday-Sunday period, bringing its combined total to 1.36 million, according to the data from the Korean Film Council. It became the sixth title released in 2021 to top the 1 million threshold, fol

SK hynix Inc., the world's second-largest memory chip producer, said Monday it has started the mass production of DRAM with the latest 10-nanometer (nm) process technology. SK hynix said its 8 Gigabit Lower Power Double Date Rate 4 (LPDDR4) mobile DRAM is built on the 1anm node, using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. The 1a is the fourth generation of the 10nm DRAM process solution following the 1x, 1y and 1z. The South Korean chipmaker said it plans to supply the latest mobi

South Korea's exports rose 14.1 percent on-year in the first 10 days of July on the back of robust demand for chips, autos and petroleum products, customs data showed Monday. The country's outbound shipments stood at $15.1 billion in the July 1-10 period, compared with $13.2 billion a year earlier, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service. The country's exports are set to extend their gains to the ninth straight month in July if the current pace continues. Overseas shipments, which

South Korean stocks opened higher Monday as investors sought to buy oversold stocks after the benchmark index took a breather the previous session. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (Kospi) rose 22.86 points, or 0.71 percent, to 3,240.81 points in the first 15 minutes of trading. Stocks came to a strong start after the Kospi retreated 2.64 percent in the past three sessions amid rising concerns over the fourth wave of the pandemic in the country. Market kingpin Samsung Electroni

Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki has said it is not easy for the government to increase the size of an extra budget currently under review at parliament as politicians made the request amid the fourth wave of the pandemic. In late June, the government proposed an extra budget of 33 trillion won ($28.7 billion) to fund another round of COVID-19 aid packages for people in the bottom 80 percent income bracket and small merchants hit hard by the pandemic. But politicians raised the need to increase th

A South Korean missionary couple, who were abducted by an unidentified group in Haiti, have been released over the weekend after 17 days in captivity, the foreign ministry said Monday. The two Korean citizens were set free at 12:06 p.m. on Saturday (Haiti time) and left the country the following day to return home via a third country, the ministry said. They remain in good shape. Soon after learning that the couple were kidnapped on the outskirts of Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince on June 24

Imported electric vehicle sales jumped 65 percent in the first half compared with a year earlier despite an extended COVID-19 pandemic, industry data showed Monday. From January to June, the number of imported EV registrations jumped to 14,295 units from 8,681 in the year-ago period, according to the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association and Carisyou Data Lab. Imported EVs accounted for 54 percent of the country's overall EV sales of 26,632 units in the first six months, the

Foreign investors unloaded about 500 billion won ($436 million) worth of South Korean stocks in June to remain net sellers for the second consecutive month, data showed Monday. Offshore investors' net selling of local stocks came to 499 billion won last month, according to the data from the Financial Supervisory Service. As of end-June, foreign investors held 842.3 trillion won worth of local listed stocks, accounting for 29.9 percent of the stock market capitalization. The data also showed f

North Korea's foreign ministry on Monday accused the United States of using humanitarian aid as a political tool for interfering in internal affairs and taking issue with human rights. Kang Hyon-chol, a senior researcher at the Association for the Promotion of International Economic and Technological Exchange, made the case in an article published on the website of the North's foreign ministry. "In actual practice, many countries have undergone bitter tastes as a result of pinning much ho

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) on Sunday narrowed its lineup of presidential contenders down to six in the first round of the party primary to pick its candidate in next year's presidential election. The DP declared Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung, ex-DP chief Lee Nak-yon, ex-Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, ex-Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae and two others as the six final winners of the first-stage presidential primary. The results are based on opinion polls conducted from Friday-Sunday on party

The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae reiterated Sunday that the decision on President Moon Jae-in's potential attendance at the opening ceremony of the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games depends on whether the visit would guarantee a fruitful summit meeting between the two countries' leaders. Cheong Wa Dae has left the door open for Moon's possible attendance at the opening ceremony set for July 23 and a summit meeting between Moon and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on that occasion. The possibil

New orders won by South Korean shipbuilders hit a 13-year high in the first half of the year amid signs of a modest recovery in global trade from the COVID-19 pandemic, data showed Sunday. Korean shipbuilders led by Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. won new orders worth $26.7 billion that amounted to 10.88 million compensated gross tons (CGTs) in the January-June, according to the data provided by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Compared with a year ago, new orders skyrocketed 724 per

South Korean manufacturers' business sentiment soared to a two-year high, largely buoyed by optimism about a fast rebound of the tech industry, data showed Sunday. The business survey index (BSI), compiled based on a survey of 1,034 manufacturers, showed an overall market forecast of 97 for the April-June period, the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET) said. The corresponding number for sales stood at 100. A BSI larger than 100 means that optimists outnumber pessimists.

"Permission to Dance" by South Korean superband BTS snatched the No. 2 spot on Spotify's Global Top 200 chart, the global streaming giant said Sunday. The upbeat number was streamed 7,339,385 times on Spotify on the day of its release Friday, the streaming service said. The song was only second to "Beggin'" by Italian rock band Maneskin, the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest this year. "Permission to Dance" also came in first on 13 regional top 200 charts