Korea’s financial watchdog said Wednesday it is seeking to adopt steps to ease households’ repayment burden of home-backed loans as the slumping property market erodes the value of collateral.The Financial Supervisory Service said it is studying plans to have banks convert maturing mortgages exceeding a lending limit, or the loan-to-value ratio, into credit loans instead of retrieving them. The LTV ratio is one of the main tools to curb household loans by restricting the maximum amount of money

Korea’s dependence on trade rose to an all-time high last year, data showed Wednesday, spawning concerns the country could become more vulnerable to the slumping global economy. The ratio measuring Korea’s reliance on trade for growth stood at a record 113.2 percent last year, up from 105.2 percent in 2010, according to data by the central bank. The ratio measures the value of exports and imports against gross national income.The ratio, which largely hovered near the 80-percent range in the mid-

South Korea's trade surplus shrank from a month earlier in July as exports slipped at a greater pace than imports, the government said Wednesday.The country's trade balance came to $2.7 billion in the black last month, compared with a surplus of $4.96 billion in June, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.Still, July marks the sixth consecutive month the country has posted a trade surplus

South Korea's consumer prices grew at a slower pace last month amid government efforts to keep inflationary pressure down, a report showed Wednesday.The country's consumer price index rose 1.5 percent from a year earlier in June, compared with a 2.2 percent on-year gain the previous month, according to the report by Statistics Korea.July's reading marks the first time since July 2009 that inflatio

Hwang calls for introduction of peak salary systemThe ruling Saenuri Party chairman Hwang Woo-yea said on Tuesday that his party would take steps to obligate all businesses to set the retirement age at 60.At present, companies are only recommended to set the retirement age at 60. The average retirement age for local firms with over 300 employees is 57.4, and people actually retire at age 53 on average, according to the Korea Labor Institute.“We will initially push for extending the legal retirem

The Korea Development Bank said Tuesday it dropped the plan to take over HSBC’s 11 retail branches in Korea. KDB said in a statement that it agreed with HSBC to stop acquisition talks due to disagreements over employment conditions, and to no longer seek to buy the U.K.-based bank’s retail operations here.The state-run bank had begun talks with HSBC in April to acquire its local retail branches in the form of purchase and assumption, which does not involve a transfer of money as KDB was to take

Shipments of South Korean vehicles to Africa and the Middle East soared nearly 35 percent in the first half of this year, helping the regions emerge as the country’s biggest markets, industry data showed Tuesday.South Korea’s five carmakers led by Hyundai Motor Co. exported $1.28 billion worth of vehicles to African nations in the January-June period, up 34.4 percent from a year ago, according to data compiled by the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association.The other companies are Kia Motors C

The world’s largest solar plant on water went into operation on Tuesday, paving the way for the commercialization of a new solar energy provider, said Korea Water Resources Corp., or K-water. The state-run water service company organized the three-year project in August 2008, and Korean industrial solutions firm LSIS undertook the plant construction in 2011 on Hapcheon Dam in Hapcheon, South Gyeongsang Province. “K-water plans to form partnerships with private firms for the standardization and o

Foreign investors are cutting back their stakes in major Korean companies amid a sliding stock market hard hit by the European debt crisis.But they are expanding ownership at the nation’s top two conglomerates Samsung and Hyundai, Chaebol.com, a website tracking Korean conglomerate owners, revealed Tuesday. According to the research firm, 93 affiliates of the nation’s top 10 conglomerates saw their combined foreign ownership decline from 20.19 percent in March to 19.79 percent this month. The 0.