The South Korean won soared to a 17-month high against the U.S. dollar on Friday as rate freezes by central banks here and abroad prompted a weaker greenback, dealers said. After breaching the 1,060 mark as soon as the market opened, the local currency ended at 1,054.70 won against the U.S. dollar, up 5.7 won from Thursday and the highest close since Aug. 2 last year. The rate freeze by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank on Thursday caused the greenback to further depreciate, deal

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s top memory chip and smartphone maker, said Friday it has set up a joint venture in the United States with Japanese tech giants as they move to develop new memory technologies.Samsung, Panasonic Corp., Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. launched “Next Generation Secure Memory” earlier this month to collaborate on a new content protection technology for flash memory cards that are used in mobile devices.The four participants respectively own 25-percent stakes in the

NEW YORK (Yonhap News) ― The world ranking of South Korea’s economic freedom dropped by three notches this year, an international report said Thursday, citing the country’s corruption problems as hurting “equity” and “trust” in the government.According to the report jointly compiled by the U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, South Korea came in 34th out of 177 countries in terms of economic freedom, down from 31st last year. It also ranked 8th out of 41 Asia-Pacific

Despite Ssangyong Motor’s Thursday agreement to reinstate 455 workers on unpaid leave from 2009, another labor dispute is looming at the nation’s fifth-largest carmaker. At the center of the brewing controversy is how to deal with those who voluntarily resigned or were fired during the restructuring process in 2009. The carmaker didn’t include them in the list of reinstatement, but labor circles, including the Korean Metal Workers Union, have urged the company to rehire them as they left the com

The transition team of President-elect Park Geun-hye is expected to consider elevating the administrative status of the Small and Medium Business Administration, which oversees policy support for smaller businesses. On Friday, the state-run agency offered its policy briefing to the transition team, emphasizing the necessity for it to be upgraded to a ministerial-level government office to carry out relevant policies more efficiently. The agency, affiliated with the Ministry of Knowledge Economy,

A key part of the incoming Park Geun-hye administration’s fiscal policy is to cover 6 trillion won ($5.7 billion) each year of its increased welfare budget with taxes collected from the “underground economy.”For this, the National Tax Service is preparing to gain more access to the Financial Intelligence Unit’s information on cash transactions and conduct tax inquiries on sectors highly suspected of tax evasion.“We first need to establish the necessary infrastructure ― that is, greater access to

Amazon.com on Thursday launched a service that gives compact disk buyers instant copies of music in the Internet “cloud” in a major challenge to Apple‘s iTunes shop.Amazon AutoRip provides free MP3 versions of music on CDs bought from the online retail titan.Copies of tunes are stored in Cloud Player libraries on datacenter servers and can be streamed to an array of Internet-linked devices including smartphones or tablets powered by Android or Apple software and Kindle Fire tablets.“What would y

South Korea's central bank froze the key interest rate for the third straight month on Friday amid signs of some improvements in the global economy.Bank of Korea (BOK) Gov. Kim Choong-soo and his six fellow policymakers held the benchmark 7-day repo rate steady at 2.75 percent for January. The central bank cut the rate in July and October to prop up the slowing economy.The decision was widely anticipated as 15 out of 21 analysts forecast the rate freeze in a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financi

South Korean stocks opened higher Friday on improved economic data from China and the eurozone, analysts said.The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) increased 7.39 points, or 0.37 percent, to trade at 2014.19 in the first 15 minutes of trading.Tech blue chips led the market gain, with industry leader Samsung Electronics moving up 0.72 percent and its smaller rival LG Electronics climbing 0.66 percent. Top chipmaker SK hynix edged up 0.56 percent.Logistics shares also gathered gr