The government plans to lower capital gains taxes on home transactions for multiple homeowners and ease regulations on apartment redevelopment in affluent southern Seoul as it strives to prevent a sluggish real estate market from dragging down the economy.Officials on Wednesday rolled out a package of measures to rejuvenate housing transactions which also include more support for cash-strapped construction firms and low-income earners.The government will submit related bills to the National Asse

The Korean economy should grow 3.5 percent next year, slowing from an earlier estimate of 3.7 percent due to the eurozone debt crisis, and expand 4.1 percent in 2013, Goldman Sachs said on Wednesday. “There are many factors at work, and it’s true that people read confusion out of the current situation, but there won’t be a repeat of the 2008 turmoil,” said Kwon Goo-hoon, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, at a press briefing in Seoul.In the short term, a bearish mood will prevail in the first hal

The proportion of the country aged 15-64 will shrink to 49.7 percent by 2060, a government report said Wednesday.Statistics Korea said the shrinkage of the “economically active” population will be gradual as the working population began shrinking in the past five years for the first time in history.The number of working age people, standing at 35.98 million, or 72.8 percent of the population now, will increase to 37.04 million until 2016, and decline to 21.87 million, or 49.7 percent of the coun

Sharp Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., and six other makers of liquid crystal display panels used in computers and televisions agreed to pay $388 million to settle price-fixing claims by direct purchasers of the products. Sharp, Japan’s largest panel maker, paid $105 million; Samsung, the world’s lar

South Korea’s economy grew a seasonally adjusted 0.8 percent in the July-September period from the previous quarter, marking the slowest pace in three quarters amid growing worries over weakening domestic demand, revised central bank data showed Tuesday.Growth of the country’s gross domestic product, a key gauge of economic performance, was up from an earlier estimate of 0.7 percent, according to the Bank of Korea, but extended its downward trend for the second straight quarter after 1.3 percent

Grandsons and great grandsons of chaebol founders are awaiting promotion in upcoming regular management reshuffles. GS Group chairman Huh Chang-soo’s only son Yoon-hong, general manager at GS Engineering and Construction, is set to be promoted to executive-level Wednesday, company officials said Tuesday. Thirty-two-year-old Huh Yoon-hong joined GS Caltex in 2002 and moved to GS E&C three years later. He currently heads the company’s financial affairs team and will do the same job after promotion

Hyundai Oilbank said it will offer money from a fund raised by its employees to the families of two firefighters and a police officer who were killed on duty last weekend. Lee Jae-man and Han Sang-yoon of the Songtan firefighting squad in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, were killed in a fire at a furniture exhibition hall on Saturday. Bae Geun-sung, assistant inspector at the police station in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province, died Sunday while trying to save a person who was electrocuted after his car