“Do you have any of the credit cards listed here? You can get up to 20 percent discount,” a restaurant cashier asks a diner settling her bill, indicating a wall chart.Kim Lee-soo, 22, shuffles quickly through a stack of cards in her bulging wallet. After passing on five or six of them, she finally finds one that matches the list and claims the full discount.It’s a typical scene in Korea, where peo

   South Korea's jobless rate rose in March from a year earlier, but the number of newly created jobs grew sharply as the private sector continued to expand recruitment, a government report showed Wednesday.   The jobless rate was 4.3 percent last month, up from 4.1 percent a year earlier, according to the report by Statistics Korea. It was, however, down from 4.5 percent in February.   The number

   South Korea's central bank on Wednesday revised up its projection for this year's consumer inflation on high oil and food prices, but the bank retained its economic growth forecast.   The Bank of Korea (BOK) upgraded its inflation projection for this year to a three-year high of 3.9 percent from a previous estimate of 3.5 percent, indicating that the country will face a buildup in inflationary

The Finance Ministry launched a new task force to help developing nations improve infrastructure and policymaking under the Knowledge Sharing Program. Helping underdeveloped nations with long term goals is a G20 agenda initiated by President Lee Myung-bak as the host of the G20 Seoul Summit last year.Seoul has finished its policy consultations with four African nations including Ghana and Algeria.

The recent hacking at Hyundai Capital raises the possibility that customer information at Hyundai Card could also have been stolen or be vulnerable to intrusion.Hyundai Capital recently suffered a cyber attack in which personal information of about 420,000 customers and passwords of 13,000 have been hacked.While the automobile loan-oriented firm has been under an intensive probe from the FSS, regu

Regulator suspends parts of brokerage unit’s operationsFinancial regulators on Wednesday requested that the prosecution investigate Deutsche Bank AG and its staffers for allegedly manipulating stock prices last November.In addition, they suspended some operations of Deutsche Securities Korea, a brokerage unit of the Germany-based investment bank. The securities firm is banned from selling a certai

BOK freezes key rate at 3 pct for AprilSouth Korea's central bank froze the key interest rate on Tuesday, a sign that it needs more time to assess the impact of a rate hike in March amid lingering economic uncertainties like the fallout from Japan's quake.   Bank of Korea (BOK) Gov. Kim Choong-soo and his fellow policymakers froze the benchmark seven-day repo rate, dubbed the base rate, at 3 perce

The International Monetary Fund is hosting a recruitment drive in Seoul next week for positions in its Technology and General Services Department, it said Monday.The all-day event slated for April 19 is part of the lender’s regional job fair to recruit East Asian candidates. The event will take place at Grand Interncontinental Hotel and may include on-cite interviews. Positions are open for facili

FSC delays ruling on Lone Star’s shareholder eligibility to April 27Korea Exchange Bank has been barred from operating deposit businesses in the U.S. since Lone Star Funds took over the lender in 2003, in contrast to Korea where there have been no such restrictions, sources said Sunday.The restriction indicates that U.S. regulators regard Lone Star as a non-financial investor, they said.“It seems

 South Korea's producer prices grew at the steepest pace in 28 months in March on the back of a hike in oil and commodity prices, the central bank said Friday, indicating growing inflationary pressure.   The producer price index, a barometer of future consumer inflation, jumped 7.3 percent in March from a year earlier, up from6.6 percent tallied the previous month, according to the Bank of Korea (