A rate cut by South Korea’s central bank may not help ease low-income families’ debt-serving burdens as their debt holdings stood relatively low and income growth remained stagnant, data showed Monday.In a surprise move, the Bank of Korea on Thursday cut the benchmark seven-day repo rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.5 percent in a bid to support the government’s stimulus drive.BOK Gov. Kim Choong-soo said in a press conference that the rate reduction would ease debt-serving burdens for low

New foundation for research aims to foster Nobel Prize laureates

Samsung Group, South Korea's No. 1 conglomerate, said Monday it plans to to establish a foundation to bolster the country's growth engine in line with the government's push to cultivate economic development.The Samsung Research Foundation, slated to open in June, will support research and development in basic science, materials engineering, and information and communication technology, the company said.The group will inject 1.5 trillion won ($1.34 billion) by 2022, starting with 300 billion won

South Korean stocks traded 0.03 percent lower late Monday morning, led by losses in large-cap exporters, analysts said.   The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) fell 0.49 points to 1,944.26 as of 11:20 a.m.   Hyundai Motor lost 1.06 percent, with Korea Zinc, a local major zinc smelter slumping nearly 5 percent.   In contrast, telecom and construction firms gathered ground. No. 1 mobile carrier SK Telecom surged 5.12 percent and GS Engineering & Construction rose 0.9 percent.   T

South Korean stocks turned higher after a weak start Monday, as further depreciation of the Japanese yen stopped short of unnerving investors, analysts said. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) added 0.93 points, or 0.05 percent, to 1,945.68 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Autos and utilities lent support to reverting to gains, with Hyundai Motor rising 0.53 percent and state-run electricity provider Korea Electric Power Corp. climbing 1.5 percent. Top-cap Samsung Electron

Total capitalization for South Korea's stock market edged down in March from end-2012 amid the protracted economic slump, the bourse operator said Monday.The value of shares listed on the main board and the secondary market came at US$1.1 trillion last month, down 2.08 percent from the end of 2012, the Korea Exchange (KRX) said, citing data by the World Federation of Exchanges.South Korea accounted for 2.01 percent of the total global stock market cap, ranking as the world's 15th-largest bourse,

Monitoring taskforces in motion at conglomerates since late 2012

Cash-strapped STX Group, the nation’s fourth-largest shipbuilder, is reportedly in a dispute with Orix, a Japanese financial service provider, over the management rights to its affiliate STX Energy.The alleged conflict between the two companies started as Orix, which had bought a 43.1 percent stake in STX Energy for 360.1 billion won ($330 million) as a financial investor in December last year, emerged as the firm’s biggest shareholder by increasing its shareholding to 50.1 percent last month. O

Commercial banks saw their outstanding loans extended to the household sector snowball about 1 trillion won ($909 million) in April from a month earlier, data from the Financial Supervisory Service showed Sunday.After falling 3.4 trillion won in January and 1.5 trillion won in February, the combined lending balance in the banking sector started to climb again from March, when the loans increased by 100 billion won on a monthly basis.In April, the banks’ outstanding loans came to 460.6 trillion w

Retail investors suffered losses on the South Korean stock markets this year, data showed Sunday, as the protracted economic slowdown and the weak Japanese yen continued to weigh down on Seoul shares.The returns from the top 20 listed firms most purchased by individuals on the main bourse and the tech-heavy KOSDAQ market came to minus 21 percent through Friday this year, according to the data compiled by the Korea Exchange.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index shed 2.6 percent on Frida