The South Korean business community on Tuesday called for easing the tax audit burden and more deductions for corporate entertainment outlays to better reflect the rise in overall expenses.  In a meeting with National Tax Service Commissioner Lim Hwan-soo in Seoul, companies belonging to the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry said there is a pressing need for the government to buoy corporate investments and fine-tune the way it conducts audits to not interfere with legitimate business activi

South Korean companies are moving to set up their own Chinese yuan swap market that can boost bilateral transactions by reducing currency exchange risks, business sources said Tuesday.  Sources said the move by such big names as Samsung Electronics Co. and POSCO is all part of the growing need to rely less on the U.S. dollar as a medium of transaction. China is South Korea's No. 1 export market, far surpassing the United States.  Tech giant Samsung started a direct monthly settlement worth $1-2

South Korean companies' earnings for 2014 dropped sharply on weak domestic demand and the strong local currency, but their bottom lines were found to have actually improved when tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. and oil refiners were excluded from calculations, data showed on Tuesday.  According to the data compiled by Woori Finance Research Institute, a local research firm, the combined sales of 1,235 manufacturers traded on the main bourse and the secondary stock market slipped 1.6 percent on

Property market experts say South Korean homeowners are holding off from selling their homes after the Bank of Korea’s surprise interest rate cut to 1.75 percent last week, while potential buyers are also cautious. “The rate cut is definitely a favorable factor to the market but property owners are hesitating to sell their homes, concerned that prices might rise further. Home buyers, on the other hand, hover in indecision as prices have increased recently,” said Kim Kyung-sook, CEO of a real est

South Korea's exports of agricultural products dropped 8 percent from a year earlier in February as shipments of both fresh foodstuff and processed goods dwindled, the government said Monday.  Outbound shipments of farmed goods amounted to $420.1 million last month, compared with $456.5 million in the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.  The drop was mostly attributed to large falls in shipments to Japan and the United States.  In the case of J

The South Korean economy grew at a slower pace than the economies of the Group of 20 countries on average in 2014 for the fourth year in a row, data showed Sunday.  The real gross domestic product of the G-20 nations grew 3.4 percent in 2014, a notch higher than South Korea's 3.3 percent, according to the data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  South Korea's real GDP growth rate dropped to 3.7 percent to sink below the G-20 figure of 4.1 percent in 2011, and

South Korea posted a trade surplus for the 37th month in a row in February, mainly due to the sharp drop in imports that outpaced the decline in exports, customs data showed Sunday.  According to the Korea Customs Service, the country's trade surplus topped $7.7 billion last month, up from $5.36 billion tallied for the previous month and $850 million a year earlier.  Exports backtracked 3.3 percent on-year to $41.5 billion, while imports nosedived 19.7 percent to $33.79 billion. Export, import a

The poverty rate of South Korea's elderly was by far the highest among advanced countries, while the net pension replacement rate for the population was one of the lowest, a report showed Sunday.  According to the report from the government-funded Korea Labor Institute, South Korea's poverty rate among elderly citizens was 48.6 percent in 2011, the highest among all 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.   The poverty rate refers to the rate of households that e

The profitability of South Korean listed firms declined last year as they have been struggling to secure revenue amid a protracted economic slump, industry data showed Sunday.  The country's top 100 firms by asset value posted a combined 867.6 trillion won ($768.6 billion) in sales in 2014, down 2.3 percent from a year earlier, according to the data complied by Chaebul.com, a Seoul-based market research firm.  Their operating profit contracted 15.2 percent on-year to 45.6 trillion won from 53.8

The Korean and Australian governments met Friday in Seoul to discuss repealing business regulations to boost their economies and economic ties.The Australian Embassy hosted the Best Practice Regulation Workshop, a public forum, to exchange ideas on business regulations. The participants, including Australian Ambassador to Korea Bill Paterson, Korean and Australian government officials and a panel of experts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, shared ideas on each gove

The foreign ministers from South Korea and Slovenia held talks on Friday to discuss ways to expand economic cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, Seoul's foreign ministry said.South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se met with his Slovenian counterpart Karl Erjavec earlier in the day to exchange views on geopolitical situations and economic cooperation, according to the foreign ministry.A joint statement said that the two top diplomats agreed that there is still "untapped potential" for c

President Park Geun-hye on Friday renewed calls to revitalize the South Korean economy, a day after the country's central bank joined a global easing wave to bolster growth by cutting the key interest rate to a record low of 1.75 percent. Park made the comments in a meeting with the prime minister and the chiefs of the parliament, the election watchdog as well as the top courts -- the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court.The session was meant to brief them on the outcome of her recent trip to

The Australian Embassy in Seoul on Friday hosted a forum on regulatory reform and deregulation with the South Korean government in a bid to explore ways for cooperation in these areas, officials said.The one-day forum titled the "Best Practice Regulation Workshop" came as Seoul and Canberra seek to boost cooperation in the field of regulatory reforms with a free trade agreement between South Korea and Australia (KAFTA) going into effect late last year."Services and investment are important parts

South Korea's finance minister pressed leading business groups Friday to have companies increase investment and hiring to help government efforts to revitalize the economy amid rising concerns about deflation."We can see some improvements in the real estate and labor markets as we've made all-out efforts to boost the economy," Choi Kyung-hwan said in a luncheon meeting with the heads of the country's five business associations."But main economic indices have remained sluggish due to future uncer

Bilateral trade between South Korea and the United States jumped nearly 12 percent from a year earlier last year, partly demonstrating the intended effect of a free trade agreement (FTA) enacted three years ago, the Seoul government said Thursday.In 2014, total trade volume between the two countries came to $115.6 billion, up 11.6 percent from $103.6 billion in 2013, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.South Korea's exports to the United States spiked 13.3 percent on-year to