The International Monetary Fund said Tuesday that it will maintain its earlier 3-percent growth forecast for South Korea this year.The IMF adjusted up the country's gross domestic product growth in January, with the revision in line with Seoul's growth outlook for 2018. The government here said it expects Asia's fourth-largest economy to advance 3 percent in 2018.The IMF also said the country's economy could grow by 2.9 percent in 2019, the same expansion as forecast earlier.South Korea's econom

Recent political rows surrounding the chiefs of the Financial Supervisory Service are expected to put the brakes on the Moon Jae-in administration’s ambitious financial reform drive, while leaving the financial regulator struggling in a leadership void. Speculations, meanwhile, quickly spread Tuesday after the resignation of former lawmaker and civic activist Kim Ki-sik, on who would be the next candidate, and whether Cheong Wa Dae would still take a chance with a non-bureaucrat. Kim offer

South Korea and China will hold a meeting on fisheries cooperation next week, resuming the regular consultations that have been suspended for nearly two years over the neighbors' diplomatic feud, sources said Tuesday.The two countries are currently discussing details of the 10th South Korea-China meeting on fisheries cooperation to be held in China sometime next week, the diplomatic sources said.The meeting will bring together officials from the countries' foreign ministries as well as governmen

Election watchdog finds fault with Kim's past behavior in parliament

Policymakers and private economists remain different in their forecasts on how fast the Korean economy will grow this year, following last year’s expansion of 3.1 percent.Most private research institutes here expect the 2018 growth rate to hover below the government-set target of 3 percent.A monthly report released by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance last week said Korea’s economy is maintaining a recovery momentum on the back of brisk exports and increased facility investment an

The government plans to keep the growth rate of household debt to below 8.2 percent this year by taking a set of steps to curb excessive lending, the nation's top financial regulator said Monday.Outstanding household debt stood at 1,450.9 trillion won ($1.35 trillion) in the fourth-quarter of last year, up 8.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the data by the Bank of Korea. It marked the slowest pace since the first quarter of 2015.Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku told

South Korea's chief economic policymaker on Monday urged the National Assembly to quickly approve a proposed extra budget bill that is urgently needed to tackle the country's chronic youth unemployment problem.Early this month, the government unveiled a set of measures, including bolder financial and tax incentives and the use of a 3.9 trillion-won ($3.64 billion) extra budget, to respond to the high jobless rate among young people. The government submitted the supplementary budget proposal to t

The Fair Trade Commission took more punitive actions against anti-trust law violators in 2017 over the previous year, its data showed Monday.The data, submitted to ruling party legislator Park Yong-jin, indicated that the commission received 3,037 petitions last year and took administrative action on 2,877 of them. The corporate watchdog has six different levels of punitive measures, ranging between warning at the lowest level and punitive penalty fees and referral to the prosecution at the two

Foreign investors turned to net buyers of South Korean stocks last month, data showed Monday.Offshore investors bought a net 123 billion won ($114.95 million) worth of local stocks in March, compared with net selling of 3.96 trillion won a month earlier, according to data by the Financial Supervisory Service. They were net sellers in the main KOSPI market by offloading around 200 billion won, but their purchase of shares on the secondary KOSDAQ market offset the sell-off on the main bourse, the

Samsung Securities CEO Koo Sung-hoon (front row, second from left), along with the company’s executive members and senior employees, write a letter of apology during an emergency workshop held Saturday in Seoul. The country’s top brokerage company came under fire recently for a dividend error in which non-existent shares worth 110 trillion won ($103 billion) were issued and some of the employees sold them off, causing the company’s shares to drop by double digits during th

High apartment prices and debt level aggravate burden of both young workers and retired seniors

This is the 54th in a series of articles analyzing major companies traded on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market. -- Ed. Living with fine dust has become a new norm for South Koreans, with pedestrians wearing masks and outdoor sports events often being canceled due to poor air quality. Fine dust checking apps bring yet more scientific ways to accurately measure the levels, not to mention air purifiers becoming a requisite for indoors.But with the government struggling to deal with the dust problem and

Exports of cigarettes, which rank top on the list of export items tracked by South Korea’s Agriculture Ministry, plunged during the first quarter of this year. Cigarette exports totaled $210.6 million from January to March, marking a 28.3 percent drop from the same period last year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs on Sunday. The exports were hit hard by the United Arab Emirates’ imposition of a 100 percent special consumption ta

The United States declined to designate South Korea as a currency manipulator Friday but kept it on its list of countries to monitor.In a semiannual report to Congress, the Treasury Department said the currency practices of South Korea and five other countries required close attention but no trading partner met the criteria for a currency manipulator."The Treasury Department is working vigorously to ensure that trade is free, fair and reciprocal so American workers and companies can compete

The Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Kim Ki-sik on Friday stressed the need to secure retail investors’ trust in investment funds held by public, in a meeting with chief executives of asset management companies in South Korea, according to the watchdog. In a closed-door meeting with CEOs of 15 asset management companies that took place in headquarters of the Korea Financial Investment Association, Kim also called on the CEOs to boost the returns of their pension funds and strengthen inte