The EU has removed South Korea from a blacklist of tax havens, lifting the concerns of punitive economic measures and reputational damage, the finance ministry said Tuesday.EU finance ministers agreed to remove South Korea and seven other countries from the list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said in a statement.  The seven countries are Panama, Mongolia, Barbados, Macau, Tunisia, Grenada and the United Arab Emirates.In December,

WASHINGTON -- The United States on Monday issued safeguard measures on imports of large residential washing machines and solar cells, in a potential blow to South Korean manufacturers.US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer announced the measures were approved by President Donald Trump."The (US) ITC (International Trade Commission) found that US producers had been seriously injured by imports and made several recommendations to the President," he said in a written statement. "Th

Measures taken by President Moon Jae-in’s administration to curb home prices have resulted in deepening the polarization of the local housing market.Betraying policymakers’ expectations, the prices of expensive apartments in Seoul, which were mainly targeted by tighter mortgage rules and other restrictive steps, have continued to rise, while house prices in most provincial areas are on a downward trend.Largely affected by a set of restrictive measures announced on six occasions since

The local business community on Monday continued to strongly dispute the government's argument that the raised minimum wage will eventually help the economy, dismissing such reasoning as outdated.Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon on Jan. 11 cited results of the minimum wage increases that took place in 2000 and 2007, when the job market was affected by higher hiring costs in the short run but stabilized after just a few months. His deputy, Koh Hyeong-gwon, on the same day at a different government

The World Bank Group has launched a special recruitment drive on selected global and regional functions, offering priority to Korean nationals, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance on Sunday.“A total of 11 jobs are available as of today, and other positions may be added to the list later,” the ministry said in a press release, encouraging Korean nationals to bid for the jobs.The range of functions vary from energy, investment and the public sector to legal consulting, wi

South Korea's top financial regulator said Sunday that it will tighten capital regulations on high-risk household lending, in the latest move meant to slow the pace of household debt growth. The stricter regulations will be applied to banks, savings banks and insurance firms that provide loans to home buyers of more than 60 percent of a property's value, the Financial Services Commission said in a statement. To encourage financial institutions to channel funds into the corporate sector, the FSC

Korea has seen tax revenues surpass government-set targets in recent years amid rising concerns over its long-term fiscal soundness.According to recent data from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, national tax revenue amounted to 251.9 trillion won ($236.5 billion) in the first 11 months of 2017, exceeding the yearly revenue goal of 251.1 trillion won. The ministry estimated taxes collected for the whole of last year would reach 270 trillion won, up from 242.6 trillion won a year earlier.It m

South Korea’s exports to Vietnam have been growing, with the size of the trade surplus for Seoul surpassing that with the United States, data from the Korea International Trade Association showed Thursday.Korea exported $47.7 billion worth of products to Vietnam, accounting for 8.3 percent of the country’s entire outbound shipments. Vietnam is also quickly catching up with the US as a major export destination, with the export value to Vietnam amounting to 69.7 percent of that to the

The Bank of Korea on Thursday raised its economic growth forecast for this year on expectations of continued domestic demand recovery and robust export growth. The central bank forecast that South Korea's gross domestic product will grow 3 percent in 2018, faster than its previous estimate of 2.9 percent, BOK Gov. Lee Ju-yeol told reporters. The BOK left its base rate unchanged earlier in the day, saying it "judges that the solid trend of domestic economic growth has continued as exports ha

Sixty percent of those that purchase apartments in the top four Gangnam districts in southern Seoul are residents of the area, data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Korea Appraisal Board showed Wednesday.In December alone, a total of 2,339 transactions were carried out in the four districts -- Gangnam, Seocho, Songpa and Gangdong. Among them, 59.6 percent involved buyers with registered residencies in one of the four districts. Some 18.9 percent were residents of o

Some 147,000 people have been jobless for six months or longer last year, the highest since recordkeeping began in 2000, latest figures from Statistics Korea showed Tuesday.Last year's number marks a 10.5-percent increase from 133,000 tallied in 2016. It accounts for 14.3 percent of the total number of jobless people, also the highest since 14.1 percent reached in 2000.The figure compares to 80,000 in 2009 when the country was reeling from the global financial crisis, and to 138,000 in 2000 duri

BRUSSELS -- European Union officials have proposed removing eight jurisdictions from the blacklist of tax havens the bloc adopted in December, in what critics may see as a blow to its campaign against tax avoidance. EU states decided last month to draw up the list in a bid to discourage the most aggressive tax dodging practices. But eight of the 17 jurisdictions currently listed are set to be quickly removed from the list after they offered to change their tax rules, according to EU documents se

The prospects of a simultaneous rise in the value of the won, interest rates and oil prices are casting a shadow on the government’s expectation that the Korean economy will grow more than 3 percent this year, propelled by a continuous rise in exports and a rebound in domestic demand.Trade officials here worry that such upward trends might be coupled with lingering uncertainties in the financial market and rising global protectionism to make it hard to achieve the export growth target for

South Korea's chief financial regulator said Monday that efforts are being made to find a "reasonable" option to impose a fine on Lee Kun-hee, chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., who allegedly withdrew 4.4 trillion won ($4.1 billion) from accounts under borrowed names.Earlier, the Financial Services Commission, the country's financial regulator, asked the Ministry of Government Legislation to clarify whether it could levy a fine against Lee."We will find a reasonable way, taking