Korean capital outnumbers Tokyo when it comes to billionaires

Housing prices keep soaring in Seoul, as a report showed Wednesday that only 23.5 percent of high-rise apartments sold in the first quarter of this year went for less than 600 million won ($440,000). The real estate news platform Gyeongjae Man Lab -- Economy 10,000-Lab -- analyzed the data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. It found that 2,188 of the 9,314 high-rise apartment transaction deals in the first quarter involved apartments worth less than 600 million won. It was

Both penalties, incentives missing in autonomy-based guidelines

First Vice Finance Minister Kim Byoung-hwan attended a ministerial meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) last week, Seoul's finance ministry said Sunday. During the meeting in Paris on Thursday and Friday (local time), Kim discussed global supply chains, inclusive growth and other issues, the Ministry of Finance and Economy said in a statement. On the sidelines of the meeting, Kim held separate talks with his counterparts, including Charlotte Vere of Br

The US government announced a decision Friday to extend tax credits for electric vehicles containing Chinese graphite until the end of 2026 -- an extension that followed a demand from EV manufacturers. On the Federal Register, the Treasury Department posted the final rules on the clean energy vehicle provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that included the temporary exemption of graphite from rules on the use of minerals from "foreign entities of concern," including from China, Russ

Consumer price growth falls below 3%

Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok vowed Thursday to stay vigilant on uncertainties regarding interest rate decisions by major economies and the Middle East crisis and to take bold market stabilization steps when necessary. Choi made the remarks during an emergency macroeconomic meeting meant to assess the Federal Reserve's rate-setting meeting Wednesday, where it kept the benchmark interest rate at between 5.25-5.5 percent for a sixth consecutive time. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said interest rat

Trade surplus continues 11-month rally on robust chip, auto sales

Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said Wednesday the government will set up a task force in charge of monitoring and resolving issues regarding economic livelihoods of the people. Choi made the remarks during an emergency economic ministers' meeting in Seoul, stressing the government's priority of reviving the economy and boosting consumer sentiment amid weak domestic demand and high inflation. "We will not just be satisfied with decent economic data and will put policy priority on h

Global credit appraiser S&P Global Ratings said Tuesday it has maintained its credit rating on South Korea at "AA," with a stable outlook. S&P has kept South Korea's long-term sovereign credit rating at the third-highest level on the company's table since August 2016, when it upgraded the rating by one notch from "AA-." "The stable rating outlook reflects our expectation that (South) Korea will maintain average growth rates that are higher than most oth

South Korea's tax revenue fell 2.5 percent on-year during the first three months of 2024 due mainly to weak corporate performances, the finance ministry said Tuesday. The government collected 84.9 trillion won ($61.68 billion) in taxes this year through March, down 2.2 trillion won from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The decline was due mainly to the fall in corporate taxes collected and income taxes. The collection of corporate taxes sank 22.8 percent, or

South Korea's industrial output logged the sharpest fall in about four years after four months of monthly gains in March on falling manufacturing production, data showed Tuesday. Retail sales, however, rebounded on rising demand for food and vehicles, among other items, amid concerns about weak domestic demand, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea. Industrial output declined 2.1 percent in March from a month earlier, the first fall since October, It also marked the sharpest fa

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (left), who doubles as chair of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Bi Jinquan, executive vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a state think tank, meet in Beijing on Monday to discuss ways to expand economic cooperation between the two countries. This meeting was held to check on the implementation status of the agenda items discussed at the fourth edition of the Korea-China High-Level Economic Dialogue, jointly hosted

The number of South Koreans working multiple jobs surpassed 500,000 in the first quarter of this year, with older people taking up a large proportion of such workers. A total of 552,000 people here had at least one additional job while working full time in the first quarter, according to Statistics Korea data. This marked a 22.4 percent increase compared to the 451,000 tallied in the same period in 2023. While the overwhelming majority of the working population still only has one job, the perc

SK Innovation Co., South Korea's leading refiner by sales, said Monday its net losses widened in the first quarter from a year earlier due mainly to foreign-exchange losses. Net losses deepened to 97.62 billion won ($71 million) in the first quarter from 51.95 billion won in the year-ago period, the company said in a statement. "A weak won, which drove up import prices of crude oil and decreased equity gains from SK On, weighed on the quarterly bottom line," a company spokesperson