South Korea and China will hold what they hope will be the last round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement next week, the South Korean trade ministry said Wednesday.The talks, slated from Monday through Friday in Beijing, will be the fifth this year. The two countries had planned on four rounds of negotiations.The trade agreement talks got a hard push in July when South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on joint efforts to conclude the FTA wit

The South Korean government announced plans Wednesday to transform the country’s aging industrial complexes into advanced, attractive workplaces, especially for the younger working generation.To this end, the government and private companies will together raise a total of 1.2 trillion won ($1.16 billion) to create an “industrial complex innovation fund” that will be used to improve working and living conditions at industrial complexes, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.The

South Korea's current economic slowdown is not a "temporary" phenomenon affected by cyclical factors but by more complicated and structural problems, the finance minister said Tuesday, worrying that the economy might take the road of Japan's lost decades "if not responding in a timely manner."Meeting with foreign journalists to explain Seoul's economic policy measures that his economic team has taken since mid-July, Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan reaffirmed that the government will implement e

South Korea's state-run Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) has agreed to sell its money-losing Canadian oil refining subsidiary to a New-York based commodities merchant bank later this year, its Canadian unit said Friday. Harvest Operations, KNOC's energy affiliate in Canada, said it will hand over its 100 percent stake in the North Atlantic Refining Limited (NARL) to SilverRange Financial Partners LLC for an undisclosed price. The agreement includes the Come by Chance refinery in Newfoundland, a 11

The government said Friday that it will soon launch a feasibility study on the expansion of Jeju International Airport amid a fast growing number of visitors to the southern resort island of Jeju.The move follows a recent study, published earlier in the day, that suggested the number of air passengers to and from Jeju will more than double from some 20 million in 2013 to over 44 million in 2030, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.The airport, including its runway, wi

South Korea’s central bank is expected to keep the base rate on hold in September as it measures the policy effect of last month’s rate cut and watches out for risks of ballooning household debt, a poll showed Thursday.All 16 analysts surveyed by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency, forecast the Bank of Korea to stand pat on the current policy rate of 2.25 percent at a board meeting on Friday.The latest result comes after the BOK cut the base rate in August for the first

South Korea's exports of information-communication technology (ICT) products dropped from a year earlier last month partly on a decrease in shipments to China, the government said Thursday.Outbound shipments of ICT products came to US$14.19 billion in August, down 2.1 percent from the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.Imports increased 5.9 percent on-year to $6.73 billion, causing the country's trade surplus in the sector to shrink to $7.46 billion fro

Expanded budget aims to improve low-income households, economy

A fresh round of negotiations for a three-way free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea, China and Japan ended Friday without a clear breakthrough although the South Korean side said the talks were productive."There were active discussions on the scope of market liberalization at this round of talks under a consensus between the three countries that the proposed South Korea-China-Japan FTA should be a comprehensive free trade deal for the establishment of the framework for a regional bloc,"

South Korea and Australia have agreed to step up efforts to expedite the domestic process for the early ratification and implementation of a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), Seoul's foreign ministry said Friday.Seoul and Canberra signed the free trade deal in April, but the legislatures of both countries have yet to ratify it.The agreement came as Lee Kyung-soo, deputy minister for political affairs, held a strategic dialogue with his Australian counterpart, Gillian Bird, in Australia, the