South Korea's power plant builder Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co. said Wednesday that it has signed a deal to provide pressurizers to the global artificial sun project consortium. Under the deal signed with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) consortium launched in late 2006, Doosan Heavy Industries along with its British subsidiary Doosan Babcock will provide pressurizers by 2022, the company said in an emailed statement. The pressurizers will be use

South Korea said Wednesday it will allow pig farms hit by the African swine fever (ASF) last year to resume their operations, as no additional cases among domestic pigs were reported for about 11 months. The move will pave the way for 261 farms in the Gyeonggi and Gangwon Provinces, which have been closed due to the massive outbreak in 2019, to gradually raise pigs again, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. The ASF swept through pig farms in the inter-Korean borde

SEJONG -- South Korea lost about 274,000 jobs in August, marking a decline in the number of the employed for the sixth consecutive month, as the coronavirus pandemic hammered job markets, data showed Wednesday. The country's jobless rate rose by 0.1 percentage point on-year to 3.1 percent in August, with the number of employed people falling to 27.08 million, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea. It marked the longest fall since the eight months of decline posted in 2009 amid the

Fitch Ratings lowered the growth forecast for South Korea this year by 0.2 percentage point due to the fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, the credit appraiser said Tuesday. The downgrade, would mean Asia's fourth largest economy will backtrack 1.1 percent this year from 2019. Fitch earlier predicted Seoul's economy to post negative growth of 0.9 percent. This is slightly better than the 1.3 percent contraction announced by the Bank of Korea last month. Fitch predicted that while the impact o

South Korea’s central bank announced Tuesday that it plans to directly purchase state bonds worth some 5 trillion won ($4.2 billion) by the end of this year to combat uncertainties stemming from the resurgence of the coronavirus here. “With the resurgence of the coronavirus leading to bigger market uncertainties, the government is expected to issue additional bonds,” the Bank of Korea said in a statement. “This is a preemptive move to alleviate risks from a possib

Home prices in Seoul and the neighboring area have shown some signs of stabilizing on the back of the government’s price-curbing measures, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said Tuesday. He also rolled out plans to provide some 60,000 new public apartments in greater Seoul in 2021-2022, with subscriptions due to start next year. “A month passed since taking effect, the Aug. 4 (housing) supply measures appear to be paying off to a certain extent,” the

The coronavirus pandemic has hit small businesses in South Korea. The number of self-employed people decreased at an alarming rate in July compared with a year earlier, data showed Tuesday.  According to data compiled by the Korea Small Business Institute and Statistics Korea, the country had 5.548 million self-employed people registered as of last month, down 127,000 from the previous year. The sharp on-year drop was nearly five times as steep as in July last year, when the number of se

South Korea's economic recession is expected to be deeper than expected this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the pace of recovery may be delayed as there is no end in sight for the pandemic, a state-run think tank predicted Tuesday. Korea Development Institute (KDI) downgraded the nation's economic growth outlook to a contraction of 1.1 percent this year, a sharp downward revision of a 0.2 percent expansion in its May forecast. The nation's economy is expected to expand 3.5 percen

South Korean shipbuilders took the No. 1 ranking in new shipping orders in August for the second consecutive month on the back of orders for liquefied natural gas carriers, industry data showed Tuesday. According to the data provided by global market researcher Clarkson Research Service, the Korean shipbuilders' new orders amounted to 630,000 compensated gross tons (CGTs), or 23 ships, in August, which took up 73 percent of the global new orders totaling 860,000 CGTs, or 36 ships, last month.

HDC Hyundai Development Co.'s planned takeover of Asiana Airlines Inc. appears likely to collapse this week as the property developer failed to narrow differences with the airline's creditors over acquisition terms, people familiar with the matter said Tuesday.  The deal, if it falls through, would become the country's second botched deal in the coronavirus-hit airline sector this year, following Jeju Air Co.'s cancellation of its plan to acquire smaller rival Eastar Jet Co. in July. K

SEJONG -- South Korea and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed to step up cooperation in the renewable energy sector, Seoul's finance ministry said Tuesday. The agreement was reached at an online meeting between Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki and the UAE's economy minister, Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri, on Monday, the ministry said in a statement. South Korea and the UAE have held regular talks on economic cooperation since 2006, but Monday's meeting was the first talks since the coronavirus pand

South Korea’s mandatory spending on welfare is projected to increase 40 trillion won ($33.6 billion) by 2024, amid growing concerns of the coronavirus pandemic and heavier tax burdens, a government budget proposal showed Monday. Social welfare spending would gain an average 7.6 percent annually from this year to 2024, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s four-year fiscal management plan submitted to the National Assembly. Spending for this year stood at 119.7 trilli

South Korean internet giant Kakao Corp. said Monday it will establish a data center in a city south of Seoul in an industrial-educational cooperation project. Under a deal with Hanyang University and the Gyeonggi provincial government, the data center will be built on the university's campus in Ansan, some 30 kilometers south of Seoul, at a cost of 400 billion won ($337 million).    Kakao Corp., which operates the country's most-used mobile messenger KakaoTalk, said ground will

South Korean savings banks reported 14.5 percent growth in their combined net profit for the first half of this year from a year earlier due to a sharp hike in interest income, data showed Monday. The combined net income of the 79 savings banks stood at 684 billion won ($576 million) for the January-June period, compared with a profit of 597.6 billion won a year earlier, according to the data by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS). Their interest income rose 9.5 percent on-year to 3.2 tril

South Korea's tourism income hit a 17-year low in the second quarter of this year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Monday. For the April-June period, the country posted $1.19 billion in tourism income, down 78.6 percent from $5.57 billion over the same period last year, according to data by the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO). From three months earlier, it tumbled 65.5 percent from $3.46 billion. It is the lowest quarterly amount since 2003, when South Korea's t