Government vows to reduce social, economic gap through job creation and welfare

South Korea will implement its economic policy next year to boost job creation and innovative growth, which will help improve quality of life, while laying the foundation to tackle the country's chronic low birthrate and maintain a decent economic expansion over the mid-to-long haul, the finance ministry said Wednesday.The economy is expected to grow at around 3 percent next year, following this year's estimated 3.1 percent expansion, on the back of the solid global economy and a series of polic

More than three out of every 10 South Korean workers have invested in cryptocurrencies to make a quick buck, a recent survey showed Wednesday.Of the 941 salaried people questioned, 31.3 percent have invested in virtual currencies, according to the survey conducted by online job portal Saramin.The average investment per capita was 5.66 million won ($5,300).Investments of less than one million won were made by 44.1 percent of correspondents, while 18.3 percent invested between one million won and

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee has seen the value of his stock assets rise by nearly 4 trillion won ($3.7 billion) this year thanks to a rally of the tech giant on the local bourse, a market tracker said Wednesday.According to CEO Score, Lee, who has been hospitalized since May 2014 after he suffered a heart attack, had 18.1 trillion won in stock holdings as of Friday, up 3.9 trillion won from a year earlier.Lee is the sole South Korean whose stock holdings are valued at 10 trillion wo

The value of shares traded on South Korea’s second-tier stock market Kosdaq in 2017 hit an all-time high as of Friday, riding the momentum of biotech shares and heightening volatility of shares linked to the cryptocurrency industry since November, data showed Tuesday. From Jan. 2, 2017 to Friday, investors traded stocks worth 876.3 trillion won ($813.9 billion) in total, beating the previous record of 873.8 trillion won in 2015, according to data from the market operator Korea Exchange. On

South Korea's trade ministry and local steelmakers have discussed ways to cope with the United States' growing trade protectionism including adjusting steel exports, officials said Monday.The ministry held a meeting with trade experts and local steelmakers, including top player POSCO and its rival Hyundai Steel Co., on Thursday to discuss how to tackle Washington's move to restrict the imports of South Korean steel products.Some experts proposed the need for local companies to reduce steel expor

South Korea’s quarterly growth rate of gross domestic product in volume grew 1.5 percent in the third quarter of the year, according to data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.The country’s growth rate between July and September was the third-highest on-quarter increase among G-20 countries, after China and India. China’s GDP in volume grew 1.7 percent, while India saw 1.6 percent of growth in the same period.

Economic recovery without a wage increase has been picked as one of top 10 global trends next year, a local think tank said Monday. In the 2018 Global 10 Trends report, the Hyundai Research Institute (HRI) said an economic recovery without wage hikes is widely expected globally as employers in advanced countries prefer hiring low-paying temporary workers to regular employees. The research institute expected the number of low-paying jobs in the food and housing industry will increase but that of

Korea needs to step up efforts to advance service industries to ensure sustainable economic growth amid mounting trade protectionism across the globe, economists here say.In terms of service sector competitiveness, the country remains near the bottom among member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.According to OECD data, labor productivity of service industries was just 45.1 percent of that of manufacturing industries in Korea in 2014, far below 87.8 percent in F

This is the 47th in a series of articles analyzing major companies traded on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market. -- Ed.Raonsecure, a local mobile security solutions provider, had a year filled with a string of opportunities, as the government pushed to abolish the use of ActiveX from major websites and approved operations of mobile banks. But nothing seems to have pushed the price ceiling of the Kosdaq-listed company further than growing interest in one particular market -- cryptocurrency.On the back

Mirae Asset Global Investment was managing over 300 private or retirement pension funds worth a combined 5.02 trillion won ($4.65 billion) as of November, a quarter of the domestic market, according to the firm Monday.The volume of the pension funds run by the asset management arm under Mirae Asset Group jumped more than fourfold in November from the end of 2010. The company managed private pension funds worth a combined 2.59 trillion won, while its retirement pension funds were worth

South Korea's economy may be able to pull off 3 percent growth in 2018, although numbers may dip slightly from this year, a poll conducted on head of local think tanks predicted Monday.The six research institute chiefs said in the survey carried out by Yonhap News Agency, said exports that have fueled growth in2017 will likely trail off with facility investment and the construction sector also holding back the economy.New jobs to be created in the new year could reach around 300,000, which is a

South Korea's six major economic institutes on Monday picked the global monetary policy tightening cycle as the biggest challenge for the economy next year. In Yonhap News Agency's poll of the heads of the country's six economic institutes, they expressed concerns that there might be an outflow of capital from emerging markets as the world's central banks look set to raise rates further as part of monetary tightening.  "A massive amount of capital has been injected into emerging market

　Growth of South Korean households’ financial assets reached an all-time low this year amid prolonged low interest rates, government data showed Sunday.　The average financial assets of local households stood at 97.8 million won (US$90,600) as of the end of March, up a mere 1.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the data from Statistics Korea, the Financial Supervisory Service and the Bank of Korea.　It marked the lowest on-year gain since 2012, when those agencies began compiling rel

South Korea‘s benchmark stock index is widely expected to stage a rally at the start of the new year following a recent downturn sparked by massive foreign selling, sources said Sunday.　Foreign investors have been dumping South Korean shares this month to lock in gains in top-cap Samsung Electronics Co. and other tech issues, with their net selling reaching more than 1.8 trillion won (US$1.7 billion). 　Offshore investors’ heavy selling has sent the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Pri