Kwon Yong-won, chief executive of Korea’s online-only brokerage Kiwoom Securities, was elected the chairman of the Korea Financial Investment Association Thursday. Starting Feb. 4, the 56-year-old will serve his three-year term for the self-regulatory organization for financial investment industry in Korea. Kwon is the fourth chairman of the association founded in 2009. Kwon earned 145 votes out of 231 participants to beat contenders, former chief Woori Investment & Securities Hwa

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission said Thursday it plans to circulate a combined 11.2 trillion won ($10.6 billion) this year for local retail borrowers that hold midrange credit scores while having trouble finding corresponding loans.The FSC pledged to pour a combined 8 trillion won into state-run loan products sold at banks, including those designed for refinancing. The remaining 3.2 trillion won will be spent to encourage private banking institutions to develop and sell midrang

Standard Chartered Bank Korea released updates to its flagship mobile banking app “Self Bank” on Jan. 8, almost a year after the app was released.The app is designed to allow its retail customers to buy banking services without visiting a brick-and-mortar branch. Since the app was launched in February 2017, Standard Chartered Bank Korea has sold 53,000 products ranging from checking products, deposits, savings, credit cards, consumer loans to insurance through the app. The update ena

Korea is considering imposing taxes on virtual currency transactions as part of its efforts to curb excessively speculative investment in cryptocurrencies, the country's top economic policymaker said Thursday. "We are reviewing (taxation) because (cryptocurrency) is seen to be taxable," Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon told lawmakers. "We are looking at a variety of cases in other countries." The finance minister also stressed that virtual currencies are not legal tender, addin

South Korea’s financial watchdog on Tuesday unveiled a set of guidelines to employ a real-name transaction system for virtual coins encrypted on distributed ledger platforms like blockchain, starting Jan. 30. Once the new real-name transaction system comes into effect, cryptocurrency traders will be able to resume the purchase of encrypted coins like bitcoin, ether or ripple in Korea.Traders in Korea have faced hurdles in depositing money to buy more coins since the government in December

Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon instructed the Cabinet on Tuesday to come up with stronger codes of conduct for public servants after a financial watchdog official was found to have profited from information on cryptocurrency regulations.According to a government inspection, the Financial Supervisory Service worker earned about 7 million won ($6,550) in profit from selling about half of his virtual currency holdings last month, just two days before the government announced a package of measures aimed

Six South Korean banks will begin issuing new trading accounts for cryptocurrencies next week by introducing a system that bans the use of anonymous accounts in cryptocurrency transactions, a senior financial regulator said Tuesday.When the banks introduce the system of verifying cryptocurrency investors' identification next Tuesday, current virtual accounts for virtual coins will be banned the same day, Kim Yong-beom, vice chairman of the Financial Services Commission, told reporters.Financial

The Export-Import Bank of Korea and Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-sure) signed a memorandum of understanding Monday to help Korean companies secure more construction and shipbuilding projects overseas and create jobs. Eun Sung-soo, chief of the Eximbank, and Moon Jae-do, head of K-sure, vowed to enhance cooperation for policy support on bidders looking to win overseas projects, in a meeting held Monday in Eximbank headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul.  Eximbank and K-sure agreed to share i

Kakao Bank, South Korea’s biggest direct bank, announced Monday it would start selling housing deposit loan products for either a two-year period jeonse (lease with down payment) contract or monthly rent, from Tuesday.A face-to-face process when submitting documents will not be required, like other products of the online-only bank, partly with the help of scraping technologies that enable the bank to extract documents regarding housing deposit loan borrowers’ identification.The annou

The government said Monday it will collect up to 24.2 percent of corporate and local income taxes from South Korea's cryptocurrency exchanges this year.The Seoul government has been striving to rein in the virtual currency frenzy in Asia's fourth-largest economy while contemplating a bill to ban cryptocurrency exchanges.Amid concerns over a bubble, the government last month banned the opening of new virtual accounts for cryptocurrency investors and required virtual currency traders to change the

This is the 49th in a series of articles analyzing major companies traded on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market. -- Ed.On South Korea‘s second-tier stock market, not only tech and bio companies are on the rise, but also one unique industry has been steadily growing: education services. Reflecting the country’s high enthusiasm for education and aspirations for better jobs, education services companies have been gaining presence in the market dominated by tech companies. MegaStudyEdu, a test

The government plans to require banks and exchanges to keep records of cryptocurrency transactions, in a potential move to impose taxes on the largely covert deals, financial authorities said Sunday.Coming in the wake of the government’s earlier order to convert all cryptocurrency accounts into real-name accounts, the idea reflected Seoul‘s efforts to assume control of the overheated market.The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit is currently working on a set of anti-money laundering g

Among cryptocurrency exchanges around the world, the one with the largest volume of transactions is based in South Korea, showed data from tallying website CoinMarketCap. As of 10:40 a.m. Thursday, the transaction volume for 24 hours at Upbit based in South Korea reached $7.577 billion, far ahead of Hong Kong’s Binance, which ranked second.Except for the No. 1 and No. 3 spots, most exchanges with large transactions were located in Hong Kong and China. Although Upbit topped the world market

A high-ranking Ministry of Justice official on Thursday described cryptocurrency founders as scammers and insisted that any purchase of encrypted coins in Korea translates into an outflow of cash.Shim Jae-chul, an official at Justice Ministry in charge of policy and planning, said in a panel session held in the National Assembly Thursday that the recent cryptocurrency speculation in Korea stems from coin founders’ proclamation that their coins would turn into an alternative to gold or a me

A Financial Supervisory Service employee who allegedly sold off his cryptocurrency coins just before the release of the government’s anti-speculative measures was found to have been a member of the task force preparing the plans.The Office for Government Policy Coordination and the FSS said Thursday that the official who reportedly sold his coins right before the government’s announcement was an FSS employee dispatched to the Policy Coordination Office to prepare measures aimed to cu