Financial authorities to inspect firms’ selling of foreign currency insurance

South Korea’s financial authorities plan to launch an industry-wide probe into insurers selling foreign currency insurance -- which has been gaining popularity here in recent years -- next month, on allegations of possible misselling of the high-risk products, sources said Friday. When customers subscribe to foreign currency insurance in Korea, they pay an insurance premium with foreign currency, the most popular being the US dollar, and receive payments with the same currency. The natio

Feb. 26, 2021

GC WellBeing to repurpose liver drug as COVID-19 treatment

GC WellBeing will conduct a phase 2 clinical trial of its liver drug Laennec, to repurpose it as a COVID-19 treatment, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said Friday. This puts the total count of domestic pursuits for COVID-19 treatments at 14 and vaccines at eight. Among them, Celltrion’s monoclonal antibody regdanvimab is the only one to have been emergency-approved. Laennec is made from human placenta. Having been approved in Korea in 2005, the drug has been in use for 16 years a

Feb. 26, 2021

Kospi plunges nearly 3% on US bond yields hike

The South Korean key stock index dipped nearly 3 percent Friday, just managing to stay above 3,000 points. Affected by US inflation woes, foreign and institutional investors accelerated their selloffs of local shares. The main bourse Kospi began trading lower at 3,089.49 points then continuously moved downward throughout the day to close at 3,012.95 points, falling 2.8 percent from the previous session’s close. The index retreated below the 3,000-point threshold until around 3 p.m., but s

Feb. 26, 2021

S. Korea nears 13m 5G users in Jan.

South Korea's 5G subscriptions jumped by over one million for the first time last month to reach nearly 13 million users, data showed Friday. The country's 5G subscriptions reached 12.87 million as of end-January, up 1.02 million from the previous month, according to the data from the Ministry of Science and ICT. The latest data comes amid the popularity of Samsung Electronics Co.'s latest flagship Galaxy S21 smartphones launched last month. The Galaxy S21 series posted 30 percent higher sale

Feb. 26, 2021

Seoul stocks dip nearly 3% on US inflation woes

South Korean stocks dipped nearly 3 percent Friday on the back of an overnight Wall Street plunge that was spurred by a bond yield hike. The Korean won fell against the US dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) lost 86.74 points, or 2.8 percent, to close at 3,012.95 points. Trading volume was high at about 1.3 billion shares worth some 21 trillion won ($18.7 billion), with losers outnumbering gainers 729 to 153. Foreigners dumped a net 2.8 trillion won, institutions o

Feb. 26, 2021

Hanwha Group Chairman Kim returns to management after 7 years

Hanwha Group said Friday that Chairman Kim Seung-youn will come back to management as an unregistered representative of three Hanwha units, ending his seven-year absence. According to Hanwha Group, the chairman will take the post in the holdings firm Hanwha Corp., energy and chemical company Hanwha Solutions and Hanwha Engineering & Construction, starting next month. In 2014, Kim was sentenced to an imprisonment of three years, suspended for five years, for a breach of trust and had to res

Feb. 26, 2021

Aberlour Craftsmanship Award names latest recipient

Pernod Ricard Korea has chosen the second recipient of the Aberlour Craftsmanship Award, an award named after the single malt Scotch whisky distillery of the same name, to recognize socially responsible talents, the company said Friday. Mun Seung-ji, a furniture designer and the founder of Team Virals, has been given the prize for creating zero waste eco-friendly furniture. “Through the Aberlour Craftsmanship Award, we seek to create a positive impact on consumers by recognizing those wi

Feb. 26, 2021

S. Korea to sell W8tr of Treasury bills in March

South Korea plans to sell 8 trillion won ($7.1 billion) worth of Treasury bills next month in a bid to fund its expansionary fiscal policy, the finance ministry said Friday. The bills, which have a maturity of 63 days, will be sold in five separate auctions in March, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. With the debt sale, the outstanding amount of Treasury bills is expected to rise to 15 trillion won next month. Treasury bills are usually floated to raise money to cover short-te

Feb. 26, 2021

Pfizer vaccine approval in Korea imminent, FDA allows more flexible storage

South Korea on Friday paved the way to approving Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 as another group of pharmaceutical experts positively opined on the vaccine’s efficacy and safety. On the same day, Korea received enough Pfizer vaccines to inoculate 58,500 people, sourced from the global COVAX facility. This lot, under special import exemptions, can be used without the Drug Ministry’s emergency approval, with the first round of vaccinations to start Saturday for frontlin

Feb. 26, 2021

[From the scene] Seoul’s newest, biggest department store offers new shopping experience

As the era of coronavirus pandemic stretches on further, shopping at a touch of the fingertips from home has certainly become the new norm. Yet in bid to compete in a retail industry that is losing all boundaries, Hyundai Department Store is offering a whole new look of what the megasized retail outlet of the future should be, opening a new department store in the office district of Yeouido in Seoul on Friday. The Hyundai Seoul kicks off as the biggest department store in Seoul, with 89,100

Feb. 26, 2021

Smilegate’s latest game commemorates March 1 Independence Movement Day

Smilegate said Friday it will release Wonhon: A vengeful spirit to recount the atrocities South Koreans suffered under Japanese colonial rule and to celebrate the upcoming 102th anniversary of March 1 Independence Movement Day. According to the Korean gaming company, the prologue version of Wonhon will be unveiled on its content sourcing and distributing platform Smilegate Stove on March 1. Developed by Busan Sanai Games and published by Super.com, the thriller PC game takes place during th

Feb. 26, 2021

Mirae Asset Daewoo looks to launch in-house ESG committee

South Korean brokerage firm Mirae Asset Daewoo said Friday that it plans to set up an in-house committee focused on environmental, social and corporate governance. The brokerage house’s new agenda will be put to a vote at the upcoming shareholders meeting set for March 24. The decision came to reinforce the company’s practices in ESG management. To take the lead in being a socially responsible firm, the committee will handle decisions related to ESG issues and open the results to

Feb. 26, 2021

Banks' lending rates inch down in January

South Korean banks' lending rates edged down in January amid a slight decline in deposit rates, central bank data showed Friday. The average interest rate charged on new bank loans came to 2.72 percent in January, down 0.02 percentage point from the previous month, according to preliminary data from the Bank of Korea (BOK). The BOK cut the key interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent in May last year after delivering an emergency rate cut of half a percentage point in March to cushion the

Feb. 26, 2021

Institutions' investment in foreign securities up 12.8% in 2020

South Korean institutions' investment in foreign securities rose 12.8 percent on year in 2020 as global stocks rallied amid the coronavirus pandemic, central bank data showed Friday. The combined value of foreign securities held by institutional investors came to $369.3 billion as of end-December last year, up $41.8 billion from a year ago, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). The tally rebounded from a $9.5 billion fall in the first quarter when global financial markets were hit by the fallo

Feb. 26, 2021

Finance minister hopes for economic recovery with COVID-19 vaccination

South Korea's finance minister voiced hope on Friday that the start of the country's COVID-19 vaccine program will help people return to normal lives and give a boost to an economic recovery. Earlier in the day, more than 5,000 health care workers and patients aged under 65 at some 5,800 long-term care facilities across the nation began receiving the first doses of novel coronavirus vaccines. "I believe that the onset of the COVID-19 inoculation will give a precious boost to helping peopl

Feb. 26, 2021

Walt Disney Korea appoints new chief Tom Oh

Walt Disney said Friday it has appointed Tom Oh as chief of its Korean branch to bolster its presence in the country. Tom Oh, whose previous post was the head of direct-to-consumer business division of Walt Disney Korea, has been promoted to the general manager and representative director. Oh will spearhead Disney’s strategies and overall business in Korea. Kim So-youn, who has worked for Disney for 14 years after joining the company in 2007, will fill in Kim’s previous post. O

Feb. 26, 2021

Imported commercial car sales rise 15% in January

Sales of imported commercial vehicles in South Korea rose 15 percent in January from a year earlier on improved demand despite the coronavirus pandemic, an industry association said Friday. The number of newly registered imported commercial vehicles rose to 436 units last month from 379 a year earlier, the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA) said in a statement. Robust demand for tractors, dump trucks and special-purpose trucks gave a boost to the monthly result, i

Feb. 26, 2021

BOK to purchase as much as W7tr worth of state bonds in H1

The Bank of Korea (BOK) said Friday it plans to purchase as much as 7 trillion won ($6.2 billion) worth of government bonds in the first half of this year as it seeks to stabilize bond markets. The plan is aimed at easing volatility of bond yields because the government's issuance of bonds is expected to significantly increase, the BOK said in a statement. The minimum size of the bond purchase plan will be 5 trillion won, the BOK said. South Korea has increased sales of state debts to cushi

Feb. 26, 2021

Hyundai IONIQ 5 set to log solid sales

Hyundai Motor Co.'s IONIQ 5 all-electric model is receiving strong responses in the domestic market, with its first-day preorders exceeding 23,000 units, the country's top automaker said Friday. Hyundai started receiving orders for the IONIQ 5 midsize crossover utility vehicle Thursday well ahead of the model's launch in the domestic market in the second quarter, the company said in a statement. Preorders for the IONIQ 5, the first model embedded with Hyundai Motor Group's own EV-only electri

Feb. 26, 2021

Samsung's R&D spending ranks 4th in 2019: report

Samsung Electronics Co. was the world's fourth-largest spender on research and development (R&D) activities in 2019, a report showed Friday, trailing behind US and Chinese tech titans. Samsung, the world's largest memory chip and smartphone producer, invested 15.5 billion euros ($18.8 billion) in 2019 to rank fourth among global firms in R&D spending, according to the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology which cited data from the 2020 European Union Industrial R&D Investme

Feb. 26, 2021