The South Korean government is exploring new models of economic cooperation with Japan and Southeast Asian countries. The effort takes into account the possibility of improved bilateral relations with Japan and is expected to help mitigate the ongoing tension between South Korea and Japan.The Minist

The South Korean and Japanese governments will have another round of talks related to the latter’s export curbs next month. The Seoul government is going to request the WTO to set up a panel for dispute settlement if the talks fail to reach an agreement.The Ministry of Economy and Finance of South K

The number of foreigners living in South Korea topped two million. The exact number as of the end of 2018 was 2,054,621, which is equivalent to approximately 4 percent of the total population of the country. Sixty percent of the foreigners were residing in Seoul and the surrounding capital area at t

Early this month, the OECD Secretariat proposed a unified approach so that digital taxes can be imposed on global manufacturing as well as IT companies if their global sales are above a certain level.Digital taxes are imposed on global Internet companies such as Google and Facebook. The approach pro

The Korea Employers Federation announced on Oct. 29 that the starting annual salary of college graduates working for large corporations in South Korea is 31 percent higher than that of their counterparts in Japan, the former is much higher than the latter in terms of comparison to the respective cou

The number of startups is dropping in the manufacturing sector of South Korea. This can be attributed to the negative outlooks of its semiconductor and display industries and uncertainties represented by the ongoing trade disputes between South Korea and Japan.The Ministry of SMEs and Startups annou

South Korea completed its domestic ratification procedure for the South Korea-U.K. FTA by its National Assembly passing the agreement on Oct. 28.The FTA, which is to cope with Brexit, immediately becomes effective in the case of a no-deal Brexit and becomes effective after the transition period othe

The Korean Intellectual Property Office announced on Oct. 28 that it detected 1,140 suspicious cases of illegal trademark preoccupation in 62 countries with regard to South Korean companies’ 279 trademarks.The cases include 594 in eight ASEAN member countries and 189 in 22 European countries. The fo

South Korea’s real GDP growth for the third quarter of this year and 2019 as a whole are estimated at 0.4 percent and less than 2 percent, respectively. The country’s annual real GDP growth was below 2 percent for only four years after 1953 and the four occasions were because of national economic cr

Credit Suisse said in its recent report that the average assets of South Korean adults are US$175,020, the number of South Korean adult millionaires is 741,000, and the global top 1 percent and top 10 percent in terms of asset size include 806,000 and 12,308,000 South Korean adults, respectively.Acc

SMEs and Startups Minister Park Young-sun met with Matthias Luehrs, Daimler president in charge of overseas sales, in Seoul on Oct. 22 to discuss cooperation in the field of future mobility including autonomous driving.The minister and the president agreed to hold connected car startup hackathons an

The Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) held a seminar in Seoul on Oct. 21 on whether South Korea is an attractive investment destination. There, foreign entrepreneurs investing in the country expressed a lot of concerns.For example, James Kim, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ko

The South Korean government is planning to seek measures so that it can make a declaration on waiving its developing country status in the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations.The United States is currently calling for South Korea to waive its developing country status in the ongoing multilate

Daewoo Engineering & Construction (Daewoo E&C) has won a US$86 million order for the construction of a prefabrication yard of an immersed tunnel in Khor Al Zubair, southern Iraq.The builder announced on Oct. 21 (local time) that Safaa Al-Fayyadh, president of Port Authority and Kim Hyung, president

The Directorate General of Trade Remedies of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of India launched an investigation early this month regarding safeguard application to phthalic anhydride imported from South Korea. Earlier, Indian companies requested import restrictions, saying that the import volu

The Korea International Trade Association announced on Oct. 20 that a total of 33 anti-dumping and safeguard investigations were newly launched against South Korea from September 2018 to September 2019.The investigations are divided into 17 safeguard investigations and 16 anti-dumping investigations

South Korean Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki and Australian Treasurer Joshua Anthony Frydenberg discussed the two countries’ further cooperation in various fields such as their currency swap, the hydrogen economy and foreign policies in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 18 (local time).When it comes to the

As the United Kingdom and the European Union agreed on Oct. 17 (local time) to renegotiate Brexit or the former’s departure from the latter, much attention is being paid to its implications for the Korean economy.The agreement prevents a “No-deal Brexit” where the United Kingdom will leave the EU wi

As the Korea-Japan conflict shows no signs of coming to an end, some U.S. think tank experts stressed the need to improve relations between the two countries as Japan's export restrictions against Korea plays havoc with the world economy. They also advised the United States to intervene to help

The United States Department of Commerce made a preliminary determination in its recent sixth annual review to impose an anti-dumping duty of 60.81 percent on transformers Hyundai Electric exports to the United States and 40.73 percent on those exported by other companies such as Hyosung Corp..The d