Since April 2016, Lee Min-ho has been an ambassador for state-run Korea Ginseng Corp.’s tonic product Good Base: Red Ginseng & Aronia. Now serving his compulsory military term, Lee has maintained his stint for a third year representing the company’s tonic with extracts of aronia berry, known as “king‘s berry” or “Europe’s equivalent to ginseng.” A KGC official explained that it is allowed by law...

This is the 54th in a series of articles analyzing major companies traded on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market. -- Ed. Living with fine dust has become a new norm for South Koreans, with pedestrians wearing masks and outdoor sports events often being canceled due to poor air quality. Fine dust checking apps bring yet more scientific ways to accurately measure the levels, not to mention air purifiers...

The Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Kim Ki-sik on Friday stressed the need to secure retail investors’ trust in investment funds held by public, in a meeting with chief executives of asset management companies in South Korea, according to the watchdog. In a closed-door meeting with CEOs of 15 asset management companies that took place in headquarters of the Korea Financial Investment Associat...

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 init...

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...

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, w...

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 ...

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 a...

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 c...

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-la...

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...

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 d...

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. The fire reportedly began at a construction site near an aeration tank of a wastewater disposal plant in the facility located in the city of Paju, Gyeonggi Province, after plastic foam at the site was...

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 ...

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 i...