The prices of cryptocurrency tokens severely fluctuated immediately after being listed on South Korea‘s cryptocurrency exchanges including Bithumb, Thursday.The price of encrypted tokens Mithril and Aelf surged 11,100 percent and 90 percent, respectively, within 30 minutes after Bithumb announced the listing of the tokens at 6 p.m. Thursday. The gains also immediately evaporated. Upon the initial coin offering at 6 p.m. Thursday, Mithrill traded at 250 won (23 cents) per token on Bithumb.

Market April 13, 2018

The Financial Supervisory Service on Thursday launched inspections targeting nonbanking financial companies in South Korea, following its probe on the banking industry. The targets of the probe include 25 life insurance companies, 31 damage insurance firms and eight card companies, as well as savings banks and securities firms.The FSS will reportedly look into evidence of gender discrimination in the employment process and personal ties between applicants and high-ranking officials of companies.

Market April 12, 2018

South Korea‘s four securities firms have been slapped with a combined 3.4 billion won ($3.2 million) in fines for their failure to identify and verify assets owned by bedridden Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee under false-name accounts, watchdogs said Thursday.The amount of the fine equals 55 percent of face value of Lee’s financial assets under the accounts not owned by the chairman, which came to 6.2 billion won as of August 1993. The four companies -- Mirae Asset Daewoo, S

Market April 12, 2018

The Korea Herald is publishing a series of interviews on promising startups in the financial technology industry. This is the 13th installment. - Ed.Despite having easy access to thousands of financial products in South Korea, as one of the world’s most wired countries, consumers often find most of them irrelevant and largely fail to figure out which offers the biggest financial advantage. In a bid to simplify the myriad of choices, former owner of a street food vender Kim Tae-hoon co-foun

Market April 12, 2018

South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service on Monday began an investigation into Samsung Securities over it lacking internal controls to detect or correct a computational input error that caused slipshod dividend payments over 40,000 times larger than intended.The watchdog denounced the firm for its “severe” systemic flaw that enabled erroneously created virtual stocks to be traded like real assets.At a press conference Monday to unveil its plans to look into the fourth-larges

Market April 9, 2018

A labor union of South Korean bank employees is demanding bank branches here close during lunchtime in forthcoming collective bargaining talks.  The Korean Financial Industry Union was reported as saying Monday the proposal was designed to guarantee bank clerks get an hourlong lunch break. The KFIU is an umbrella group representing labor unions of over 30 financial institutions, including local commercial banks, provincial banks and co-ops.Korean banks, with few exceptions, are open to cust

Market April 9, 2018

A South Korean brokerage mistakenly paying 1,000 shares in dividends instead of 1,000 won ($0.93) due to a computational error Friday has exposed a major loophole in the nation’s stock trading system, prompting immediate intervention by regulators.Starting Monday, the Financial Supervisory Service will launch an inspection into internal system flaws at Samsung Securities, the nation’s fourth-largest brokerage, where the incident happened last week, officials said Sunday. The authorit

Market April 8, 2018

Contrary to market expectations for Celltrion to avoid short selling by moving from the second-tier Kosdaq market to the first-tier Kospi in February, the ratio of the firm’s short sellers have increased since then, data showed Thursday. Of the entire daily trading from Feb. 9 to Monday, short selling accounted for 13.8 percent. The figure saw an upshot from the yearly estimate until Feb. 9 this year, at 8.4 percent. By month, the average short selling ratio came to 13.6 percent in March,

Market April 5, 2018

The chief executive officer and high-ranking executives of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinnest were detained Wednesday on charges of fraud and embezzlement, according to prosecutors Thursday. This is the first time an operator of a cryptocurrency exchange in Korea has been charged.Prosecutors are seeking arrest warrants for the executives, including CEO Kim Ik-hwan, in the next two days. They are alleged to have swindled customers of digitized assets for their personal accounts, prosec

Market April 5, 2018

A fire broke out at a liquid-crystal display production facility of LG Display located in northwestern Gyeonggi Province at around 2:54 p.m. Wednesday. No casualties had been reported as of 6 p.m. LCD PRODUCTION LINE SET ON FIRE -- Smoke gushes out at a liquid crystal display production line of LG Display in northern Gyeonggi Province, due to a fire that broke out at around 2:54 p.m. on Wednesday. (Yonhap)The fire reportedly began at a construction site near an aeration tank of a wastewater disp

Industry April 4, 2018

Foreign banks with branches in South Korea reported a decline in earnings here in 2017, on falling interest and trading income, data showed Wednesday.  The 38 branches from global banks across the globe had logged a combined 680.7 billion won ($642.8 million) of net income in 2017, down 10.6 percent from the previous year, according to preliminary data from the Financial Supervisory Service. The branches suffered a drop in interest income by 58.3 billion won, or 5.2 percent on-year. The los

Market April 4, 2018

The new governor of the Financial Supervisory Service in his inauguration speech Monday stressed a need to bolster autonomy as a regulator and enhance consumer protection. Kim Ki-sik, a new chief regulator of financial institutions who took office Monday, succeeded the role of Choe Heung-sik, who offered to step down on March 12. Ex-governor Choe‘s resignation came amid growing allegations of irregularities and abuse of power in the process of hiring entry-level employees at Hana Financial

Market April 2, 2018

This is the 53rd in a series of articles analyzing major companies traded on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market. — Ed.Profitability is undeniably the key prerequisite for a firm seeking an initial public offering on the second-tier Kosdaq market.Showing a stable income has long been the clearest signal for market operator Korea Exchange and other relevant financial authorities to predict an IPO-aspirant company’s stock performance.But with changes in the speed and characteristics of the tech-savvy mar

Industry April 1, 2018

LG CNS has been selected as the most preferred bidder for a 2.2 billion won ($2.1 million) project to outline technological infrastructure for a next-generational e-procurement system by the Public Procurement Service, according to the firm Thursday.Through the bid, the information technology arm of LG Corp. will be engaged in a project for information strategy planning, a first step to revamp the state-run e-procurement system, locally dubbed “Nara Jangteo.”  A screenshot of "Nara Jangteo," Kor

Technology March 29, 2018

The number of marginal companies stuck in the financial quagmire with little room for profitability growth has been on the rise, further bogging down the economy as it anticipates rate hikes, the Bank of Korea said on Thursday. Korea refers to firms with interest costs outweighing operating profits for at least three consecutive years as “marginal companies.”The number of such firms in 2016 came to 3,126, taking up 14.2 percent of all Korean non-financial firms subject to external au

Market March 29, 2018