President Moon Jae-in on Thursday asked the National Assembly to swiftly approve an extra budget bill designed to help support small merchants hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, a presidential spokesperson said. The budget proposal of 14 trillion won ($11.8 billion) was submitted to the National Assembly last month. Moon told a meeting with senior aides that "speed is vital" for the extra budge...

The wife of presidential nominee Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea is under fire for possibly abusing her status while her husband served in his gubernatorial post, prior to announcing his presidential bid. Lee's wife, Kim Hye-kyung, has faced allegations of having made indirect orders for a Gyeonggi Provincial Government official to deliver food and fetch prescribed medicine...

South Korea is predicted to see its working age population shrink by a whopping 3.2 million during the 2020-2030 period amid the country's graying demographics, a government labor report showed Thursday. The estimate of people aged 15-64 would represent a turnaround from a growth of 1.17 million between 2010 and 2020 and 2.66 million during the previous decade, the labor ministry said in a repor...

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. said Thursday it has received a combined 1.8 trillion won ($1.5 billion) worth of orders from Europe. Daewoo Shipbuilding will build two liquefied natural gas carriers for Maran Gas Maritime Inc., the gas shipping unit of Greece's biggest shipping firm Angelicoussis Shipping Group, and six container ships for an unidentified European shipper, the comp...

K-Bank, a South Korean internet-only bank, on Thursday reported its first profit since its launch in 2017 thanks to a sharp increase in customers and interest income. Net profit came to 22.4 billion won ($18.6 million) in 2021, a turnaround from a loss of 105.4 billion won a year earlier, according to the company's interim earnings report. This marked the first annual net profit that the intern...

Krafton Inc., a South Korean gaming giant behind the global smash hit "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" (PUBG), said Thursday that it has invested $5.4 million in an Indian sports game developer, Nautilus Mobile. It is Krafton's first investment in an Indian game development studio. Nautilus is a sports game developer that developed a cricket game franchise. "Real Cricket" has been downloaded mo...

Ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung is running neck and neck with his main opposition rival, Yoon Suk-yeol, at 40.4 percent support against Yoon's 38.5 percent, a poll showed Thursday. Lee of the liberal Democratic Party gained 5.1 percentage points from the pollster's previous survey on Jan. 8-10, and Yoon of the conservative People Power Party edged up 0.5 point, according to the...

South Korea's ICT ministry said Thursday it has required tech giants Google, Meta Platforms and Netflix, as well as local rivals Naver and Kakao, to comply with the country's revised law requiring them to provide stable services. In 2020, South Korea passed a legal revision holding online content service providers accountable if they fail to maintain stable services amid growing complaints again...

Online shopping in South Korea hit a record high in 2021, led by strong demand for food delivery services and electronics amid the pandemic, data showed Thursday. The value of online shopping transactions stood at 192.9 trillion won ($160 billion) last year, up 21 percent from the previous year, according to the data from Statistics Korea. It marked the largest value since the statistics agency...

Samsung Electronics will collaborate with US-based software solutions firm Amdocs to deliver fourth- and fifth-generation private wireless network solutions to boost the connectivity of firms in the United States, according to the company Thursday. The partnership will allow the companies to advance wireless communications such as increasing download speed, and to simplify the deployment of 5G-r...

Kim Ki-hyeon, a 30-year-old salesperson based in Seoul, cast his first ballot in a presidential election in December 2012. That election was won by Park Geun-hye from the conservative Saenuri Party. The first election he ever participated in turned out to be a huge disappointment. His preferred candidate won, but Park was riddled with allegations of corruption, misbehavior and a lackluster perfo...

South Korean builders' business sentiment hit the lowest level in one year and five months in January due to seasonal and several negative factors, a poll showed Thursday. The country's construction business survey index (CBSI) stood at 74.6 last month, down 17.9 points from the previous month, according to the survey by the Construction and Economy Research Institute of Korea. The January figu...

South Korea is keeping close tabs on an upcoming session of North Korea's rubber-stamp legislature over possible messages from its leader Kim Jong-un, a Seoul official said Thursday, following Pyongyang's barrage of missile tests since the start of the year. The North's official Korean Central News Agency earlier reported the country will convene the 6th session of the 14th Supreme People's Asse...

South Korea's air passenger traffic fell 7.7 percent in 2021 from a year earlier due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, the transport ministry said Thursday. A total of 36.36 million passengers, including 3.21 million on international routes, flew with full-service and low-cost carriers in 2021 mainly for business purposes, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The n...

South Korea will earmark 841 billion won ($697.4 million) for research and development of key materials and parts this year in a move to reduce dependency on foreign supplies and boost competitiveness of local industries, the industry ministry said Thursday. It is up 22 percent from last year's budget, as the country has been ramping up efforts to nurture the materials and parts industry, partic...