A savings bank that came close to being suspended last year was found to have extended loans worth billions of won under borrowed names, sources said Monday.The finding comes as six troubled savings banks in Korea face a make-or-break moment after the grace period for penalties against the lenders with substandard capital ratios expired late last month.In mid-September, Korea’s financial regulators suspended business operations of seven troubled savings banks as part of its efforts to overhaul t

South Korea‘s economy is facing more “difficult and uncertain” factors this year as the eurozone debt crisis and other external challenges are expected to deteriorate, the top economic policymaker said Monday.The government must beef up its contingency plans to better cope with any unexpected shocks from home and abroad, while strengthening its overall economic health, Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan said.“Last year, our economy went through one unexpected challenge after another,” Bahk told his s

Foreign investment banks have slashed South Korea’s growth outlook for this year, citing unabating market jitters over the eurozone debt crisis, data showed Monday.The average economic growth for Asia’s fourth-largest economy reached 3.4 percent as of end-December last year, down from the 4.5 percent they projected at the end of January in 2011, according to the data by the Korea Center for International Finance.The figure is 0.3 percentage points lower than the government’s growth outlook annou

Nineteen entrepreneurs joined the nation’s list of 100 most stock-rich people aged under 45 last year, a conglomerate research firm said Sunday.The record figure, up from 10 a year earlier, included business people who started venture companies in their 20s in the 1990s, according to Chaebul.com, a portal following the activities of large companies. Kim Jung-ju, NXC chairman, who founded Korea’s largest online game company Nexon, ranked second with stock assets worth 2.94 trillion won ($2.53 bil

POSCO has developed a bismuth-added free-cutting steel as it seeks a high-efficient, better-performing and eco-friendly substitute for leaded steel, the steel mill said Sunday.Free-cutting steel is used for heavily machined components, such as car engine parts and electronics devices.Bismuth steel has emerged as a potential alternative to leaded steel, which is used to make free-cutting steel easier to cut at a high level of precision and speed. The toxicity of lead has elevated health and envir

South Korea’s textile exports continued to drop in 2010 with its global market share also stepping down four notches since 2000, a local industry group said Sunday.According to a report from the Korea Federation of Textile Industries, the country shipped $12.6 billion worth of textile products, including clothes, in 2010, compared with $17.7 billion worth of products exported in 2000.The country’s global market share in the industry also dropped to 2.1 percent, the world’s eighth-largest, in 201

Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-hee will attend the annual consumer electronics show in Las Vegas next week to examine the global trend in consumer electronics for this year, an industry source said Sunday.Lee will be accompanied by his son Jae-yong, president of Samsung Electronics Co., and several other executives of the world’s biggest manufacturer of memory chips and flat-screen TVs, the source said.Lee Kun-hee last visited the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2010 while Jae-yo

KT Corp., which plans to start the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution network service from Tuesday, may offer unlimited data use for 4G faster smartphone service. Industry sources said Sunday that KT would allow 3G phone users to embed the user services identity module, or USIM, chip into their LTE phones, which is banned by SK Telecom. SK Telecom, which started LTE services in July, doesn’t offer limitless data plans for LTE subscribers. Despite little difference in standard charges, heavy d

South Korean stocks are projected to trend lower in the first week of the new year, weighed down by nagging concerns over the eurozone debt crisis, analysts said Saturday.The benchmark KOSPI fell 2.2 percent last week to close at 1,825.74 on Friday as continued worries over Europe’s problem outweighed positive economic data from the United States.Reports showed that U.S. consumer confidence and orders for U.S. durable goods and home sales increased, but they were not strong enough to convince in

South Korea’s trade surplus grew from a year earlier to $4 billion last month, remaining in the black for the 23rd consecutive month, the government said Sunday.The country’s exports reached $49.7 billion in December, up 12.5 percent from the same period last year with imports growing 14 percent to $45.7 billion, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.For the whole of 2011, the country’s exports gained 19.6 percent on-year to $557.8 billion with imports growing 23.3 percent to $524.5 bil

South Korea’s meat imports in 2011 are expected to reach $3 billion, up nearly 55 percent from a year earlier, with imports of pork more than doubling, the country’s customs office said Sunday.In the first 11 months of the year, the country imported 850,000 tons of meat, including beef and chicken, worth over $2.95 billion, according to the Korea Customs Service. The 11-month total represents a 52.9 percent hike from $1.93 billion in the same period in 2010.The increase was largely led by pork i

Korean construction firms’ overseas orders topped $50 billion for a second straight year in 2011 in a healthy sign of their growing competitiveness, a report showed Sunday.According to the report by the International Contractors Association of Korea, local builders won a combined $59.1 billion worth of deals last year. That falls far short of a record $71.6 billion set in 2010. But it still substantiates Korea’s clout in the global engineering and construction market, the organization said, give