Korea Times AI content 2 team Reporter
Value context and insight. lkm@koreatimes.co.kr
The approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will foster Korea's digital asset market and fortify the country's standing on the global stage, a global cryptocurrency exchange executive said.
![[INTERVIEW] Korea should approve spot bitcoin ETF to boost crypto growth: HashKey Global](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Private consumption is expected to pick up in the second half of this year, buoyed by robust corporate earnings and increased employee bonuses, along with an overall uptick in nominal wages and slowing inflation, a central bank report said Friday.
Korea’s exports of U.S.-bound intermediate goods, including steel, chemical and petroleum products, will decline in the event of a weaker-than-expected growth of the world’s largest economy, a central bank report said Friday.
The Bank of Korea (BOK) kept the key policy rate unchanged at 3.5 percent, Thursday, the 13th consecutive freeze, while shifting the focus to the timely containment of rapidly increasing household debt and rising property prices.
The aftereffects of Korea’s weak private consumption brought on and exacerbated by sustained elevated borrowing costs will have a contained impact on the country’s growth, eclipsed by prospects of strong IT exports in the year to come, senior economists of two of the top three global ratings agency said, Wednesday.
The country's top financial regulator is coming under heavy criticism for a months-long spike in household debt, a consequence of a delay in implementing fortified household debt curbing measures, market watchers said Sunday.
Shinhan Financial Group plans to solidify its standing as the top foreign financial entity in Vietnam, as illustrated by the relocation of over 1,200 employees of five group subsidiaries to the economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City. The five oversee the group’s banking, cards, brokerage, life insurance and digital solutions.
The Korean economy faces a heightened risk of recession, strained by stalled monetary easing by the Bank of Korea (BOK), a Moody’s Analytics economist said.
Kakao Pay, the settlement and payment subsidiary of the beleaguered Kakao Corp., handed over 40 million users' data to its second-largest shareholder, Alipay Singapore Holdings, without consent from its users, Korea's financial supervisor said Wednesday. The holding company with over a 32 percent stake in Kakao Pay is an affiliate of Alipay, tied to China’s Ant Group.Central to the issue is whether the Kakao subsidiary needed user consent before the transfer and whether the handlers of the encrypted data ensured easy access to the data for users at any time.The uncovering of the Kakao subsidiary's irregularity will trigger wider scrutiny of the settlement and payment market players in the country, as indicated by the authorities’ characterization of the incident as “deserving of grave sanctions beyond criminal penalties.”