Samsung Electronics was reported to be worth 301.8 trillion won ($276.6 billion) as of the end of 2017, growing threefold compared to a decade ago, in part backed by rising value of tangible assets like facilities and real estate, according to a news report Sunday. Samsung Electronics marked the first private company in South Korea, excluding financial firms like banks, to see its total assets v...

Having a climate with cooler summers and milder winters, as well as refreshing coastal views with creamy sand and splashing blue ocean waves, the city of Gangneung remained isolated for centuries. A 500 kilometer-long mountain range separates the coastal city from the nation’s major metropolitan cities, including Seoul. Demarcating the Korean Peninsula and stretching from Wonsan in North Korea ...

Akwasi Frimpong, a Dutch-Ghanaian skeleton slider, will be one of the 11 athletes representing African nations, and the only one competing for Ghana, at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games. Before he was confirmed to be competing at the Olympics last month, Frimpong, 31, was able to commute to training sessions and competitions in North America, carrying his sled and other pieces of equipment, wit...

Celltrion, a biosimilar maker listed on South Korea’s second-tier bourse Kosdaq, will begin trading on the top-tier market Kospi starting Friday, according to the Korea Exchange on Wednesday. Celltrion is the largest Kosdaq-listed share, with 31.4 trillion won ($28.9 billion) in market cap as of Wednesday. The maker of biosimilar drugs, such as Remsima and Truxima, is expected to constitute Kore...

The Korea Financial Investment Association hailed Tuesday the decision by the Ministry of Finance and Strategy to suspend plans to impose capital gains tax on a wider range of foreign investors from nations that do not have a tax treaty with Korea. Kwon Yong-won, chairman of the self-regulatory organization for financial investment industry, called the decision “a cornerstone for building a stab...

The ruling Monday that reduced the sentence of Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong is bringing attention to Lotte Chairman Shin Dong-bin’s court verdict slated for next week. Monday’s verdict, which freed Lee, is expected to set the bar for how rulings on bribery charges involving family-run conglomerate owners will unfold. Lotte’s Shin, 62, will face a court verdict at the Seoul Cen...

South Korea‘s authorities said on Tuesday they would keep close tabs on the widening volatility in the markets in the United States that have cast a shadow on stock markets here. “We will closely watch on how the US market volatility would impact local markets,” the Bank of Korea Gov. Lee Ju-yeol told press Tuesday. Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Choe Heung-sik also asked high-ranking offic...

South Korea’s stock markets tumbled and sovereign bond yields rose sharply Monday in sync with other bearish financial markets in the United States and Asia, amid the US Federal Reserve’s signal for a March rate hike, the hawkish remarks of outgoing Fed chair Janet Yellen and the strengthening dollar. Analysts here said the impact on the market from the hawkish US Fed is inevitable, but at the s...

This is the 50th in a series of articles analyzing major companies traded on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market. -- Ed. Posco ICT, an affiliate of steelmaking giant Posco, is one of a few stocks that step outside the box of dominantly strong sectors such as biopharma on the second-tier Kosdaq bourse, showing a stellar performance on its “smart” business portfolio. Growing global demand for building “...

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in the world in market cap, sank further in South Korea on Friday, amid government talks for tighter regulation on the unfettered market. It was trading below the world average in Korea at around 7.7 million won ($7,090) per coin at around 9:50 p.m., a decrease of nearly 25 percent in 24 hours, according to the a local cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb. Bitcoin...

South Korea’s state bonds took a breather Thursday despite a hawkish stance posed by the US Federal Open Market Committee during its decision to hold the key rate steady Wednesday. On Thursday, the three-year state bond yield slid 2.5 basis point to 2.25 percent, while the five-year sovereign bond yield sank 3.2 basis points to 2.54 percent compared to the Wednesday session’s close, according to...

South Korea’s monthly consumer inflation came to 1 percent in January on-year, the slowest gain in 17 months, as the prices of agricultural goods such as vegetables fell, data showed Thursday. Calling such weak inflation “economic stability at target range,” the government pledged Thursday to carry out pre-emptive measures to curb consumer price fluctuations ahead of next week’s 2018 PyeongChang...

South Korea‘s appellate court ordered Tuesday the seizure of 191 bitcoins, worth 2.4 billion won ($2.3 million), as of 11:15 a.m. earned by providing online pornography content, overturning a district court‘s rule in September 2017 that implied seizing cryptocurrency was unlawful. This is the first time a Korean court has recognized virtual currencies encrypted on distributed ledgers as a means ...

The Korea Exchange, operator of the stock markets Kospi and Kosdaq, announced immediately after markets closed Tuesday a list of firms included on the new composite benchmark index KRX 300, ahead of its launch on Feb. 5. On the list were 305 firms. Of them 237 -- making up of 91.1 percent of the index’s market cap as of Friday -- were from the top-tier Kospi, while the other 68 came from the sec...

The Korea Herald is publishing a series of interviews on promising startups in the fintech industry. This is the ninth installment. — Ed . Robo advisers were invented in the early 2000s in the United States to achieve convenience in making extra returns by harvesting tax losses and rebalancing portfolios for investors. But bringing such convenience to retail investors in South Korea through th...