The government will evaluate all public entities, including state-run firms, and most of their projects for their impact on new and existing jobs that may determine the size of their budget in the future, a presidential committee on jobs said Tuesday. Starting next year, the public entities and their projects will be scored on the number of new, quality jobs they create. The scores will be refl...

South Korea's top financial regulator said Tuesday it will toughen punishment for financial holding firms over false disclosures of accounting books and other business reports. Under the toughened rule, which will take effect Oct. 19, fines against financial holding firms will be hiked by as much as 12 times if they violate relevant laws, the Financial Services Commission said in a statement. C...

South Korea's exporters should increase their participation in the global value chain in order to improve their productivity, a report by the central bank said Tuesday. The report featured in the monthly periodical of the Bank of Korea said South Korean exports' participation in GVC fell from 62.7 percent in 2008 to 56 percent in 2009, following the global downward pattern after the internationa...

South Korea may be hit hardest if the United States turns up the heat on China over trade issues as Seoul vies fiercely with Beijing for a bigger slice of the US market, a report said Tuesday. The Korea International Trade Association claimed in the report that Washington has singled out China for tougher import restrictions, which is resulting in greater import regulation risks for South Korean...

South Korea's total supply in manufacturing gained ground in the April-June period marking five straight quarters of growth on a sharp rise in imports, but the pace slowed down slightly, government data showed Tuesday. The manufacturing domestic supply index that measures both goods produced locally and brought into the country, advanced 5.3 percent on-year to stand at 116.9, according to the da...

South Korean stocks traded lower late Tuesday morning as institutions offloaded large-cap stocks in an apparent move to lock in profits, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index lost 6.44 points, or 0.27 percent, to 2,392.31 as of 11:20 a.m. The Seoul index had opened higher on Wall Street gains. On Monday (local time), US stocks closed higher, with the Dow edging up 0.12 ...

An accounting firm again refused to provide its audit opinions on China Ocean Resources Co., a Hong Kong-based deep-sea fisheries company listed on the Korean stock market, saying the company's accounting books were riddled with problems. In a regulatory filing on Tuesday, Shinhan Accounting Corp. said it could not "rationally judge" the financial status of China Ocean Resources, which is on the...

The recovery pace of the South Korean economy has remained feeble for months as an upturn in exports and private consumption was offset by weak industrial output, a government report said Tuesday. "The South Korean economy saw its exports and investment continue to rise and private consumption make a slight rebound, but its recovery pace remained lackluster due to a slowdown in the production of...

South Korea's antitrust watchdog has received the top rating among the world's competition authorities for two years in a row this year for its effective anti-competitive activities, the agency said Tuesday. The South Korean regulator earned five stars, or the "elite" grade, along with France, Germany and the United States, at the latest "Rating Enforcement" survey conducted by the Global Compet...

South Korean stocks opened higher Tuesday following overnight Wall Street gains, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index added 8.63 points, or 0.36 percent, to 2,407.38 in the first 15 minutes of trading. On Monday (local time), US stocks closed higher, with the Dow edging up 0.12 percent to its ninth-record closing high in a row and the S&P 500 adding 0.16 percent on con...

South Korean banks' combined net profit more than doubled on-year in the first six months of 2017, government data showed Tuesday, led by lower loan-loss provisions and higher interest income. Combined net profit at local banks soared 171.4 percent to 8.1 trillion won ($7.18 billion) in the first six months of 2017, compared to 3 trillion won a year earlier, the Financial Supervisory Service sai...

Public institutions hired about 9,730 people in the first half of this year, dropping below previous averages and missing the target, data by All Public Information in One (Alio), a government portal, showed. The newly recruited people accounted for 49 percent of the 19,862 new workers they planned to hire for the entire year. The initial goal was to meet 55.9 percent of the target by the end of...

WeWork, a global shared office space provider, said Monday it will invest a combined $500 million in South Korea and Southeast Asia as it attempts to expand its presence in the Asian market. Under the expansion plan, the New York-based company has appointed Matt Shampine, currently head of Marketing and Revenue for Asia, as the General Manager of Korea. "Today's announcement reaffirms WeWork's ...

Coming up with an unprecedented set of real estate speculation curbing measures last week, the government certainly sought to deter wealthy multiple home owners from monopolizing the market and to lower the entry barrier for first-time buyers. The extended impact of the policy, however, also seemed to reach out to the cash-strapped urban-dwelling bidders in their 30s and 40s who, under the renew...

Nearly 80 percent of the entire volume of currency in circulation, or more than 80 trillion won ($70.9 billion), was in the form of South Korea’s largest-denominated 50,000 won banknote in the first half of 2017, data showed Monday. According to the Bank of Korea, around 80.4 trillion won was circulated in 50,000 won notes as of June, up 6.1 percent compared to the end of 2016. This accounted fo...