South Korea’s exchange-traded fund market is getting very competitive and growing in a healthy way, in line with local asset management firms’ fierce competition, an executive from S&P Dow Jones Indices said Tuesday. “The Korean ETF market’s 10-year compound annual growth rate is around 25 percent, which is way above the global market’s rate of growth of 16 percent,” John Davies, global head of exchange-traded products at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said

Despite grand plans, banking giants take baby steps towards ESG at the moment, according to critics

Unionized construction workers on Tuesday called upon the government to come up with measures to resolve the urea water solution crisis, claiming the shortage of the material essential to diesel vehicles threatens their livelihoods. The Korean Construction Workers' Union urged the government to promptly resolve the lack of urea water supply, punish hoarding of the material and aid construction workers facing difficulties operating their equipment due to the crisis. "My urea water reserves

The labor ministry has recognized that a workplace bullying incident occurred within e-commerce giant Coupang Inc. early this year, refuting a finding reached by the company through an internal probe, the company's union said Tuesday. In response to a petition filed by a Coupang logistics center worker, the ministry's branch office in northern Incheon, west of Seoul, concluded a supervisor's reprimanding of a worker's job performance in connection with union activities constitutes workplace bul

Some sleet was witnessed on the mountains on the outskirts of Seoul on Tuesday due to a sudden drop in temperatures but fell short of being recorded as the first snow of the season, the state weather agency said. The weather became as cold as winter amid light rainfall in the morning, raising expectations for the first snow of the season in the capital. Indeed, some sleet fell on suburban Seoul mountains, such as Dobong, Bukhan and Gwanak, where temperatures were lower than in the downtown and

The North is elevating its leader’s status, making him equal to his predecessors

North Korea has continued operation and production at its key uranium plant, a US think tank said Monday, highlighting the reclusive regime’s pursuit of weapon advances amid the stalled denuclearization talks with Washington.  Beyond Parallel, a website specializing in North Korean matters run by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Pyongsan Uranium Concentrate Plant, located some 45 kilometers north of the inter-Korean border, remains operat

South Korea is expected to send an Air Force transport aircraft to Australia this week to import 27,000 liters of urea water solution, a military source said Tuesday, in an effort to ease a supply shortage of the fluid. A KC-330 tanker transport plane is expected to take off at Gimhae International Airport in the southeastern port city of Busan on Wednesday, the source said, noting details for the operation of the plane have yet to be finalized. The mobilization of the plane comes amid the gov

Industry’s first 14-nanometer-based 16-gigabit LPDDR5X is 1.3 times faster than the previous LPDDR5 solution

South Korea said Tuesday it has identified thousands of tons of urea held by local importers and plans to use them to produce urea water solution, a key fluid used in diesel vehicles to cut emissions, amid its supply shortage. Special inspection teams began crackdowns on hoarding of urea or its solution Monday and found local importers to have held a combined 3,000 tons of urea, according to the government. Of the 2,000 tons of urea to be used for vehicles, the government plans to send 700 ton

President Moon Jae-in will attend a virtual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit later this week during which he will focus on the pandemic recovery and vaccine donations, a presidential spokesperson said Tuesday. Leaders of the 21-nation APEC will hold the virtual summit Friday, with the region's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply chains and carbon neutrality expected to be high on the agenda. During the summit, Moon plans to emphasize South Korea's role

South Korea’s focus on forging a complete hydrogen energy ecosystem in line with its climate pledge is presenting new investment opportunities, as the country is in dire need of a technological breakthrough to reduce the cost of green transition, a report by German investment bank Deutsche Bank showed Tuesday. The country’s ambition to increase fiscal spending to nurture hydrogen-related research and development, combined with the legal and institutional framework in the m

Ruling party hesitant to push, dimming chances for imminent passage

Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, on Tuesday was hit by a power outage that left a large part of the region without electricity for more than an hour, the state-owned utility said. Korea Electric Power Corp. confirmed that the widespread blackout started at 10:26 a.m. and power was restored at 11:59 a.m. after damaged power equipment was replaced. Around 52,800 households were estimated to have experienced about 1 1/2 hours without power, and nine out of the 12 districts in the city were affected. K

Convention effect maximized after last Friday’s race, industry watchers say