Korea Times AI content 2 team Reporter
Value context and insight. lkm@koreatimes.co.kr
The sales of mass-produced kimchi are soaring, propelled by an increasing number of households that find the otherwise home-made Korean dish too expensive due to a spike in ingredient prices, market watchers said. Napa cabbage and radish prices have surged up to 50 percent from a year ago, influenced by longer-than-expected summer heatwaves this year.
The trading volume of Korea treasury bonds (KTBs) between Feb. 24 and June 24 soared 71 percent from a year ago, MarketAxess, a global electronic trading platform for institutional credit markets, said Monday. Nearly half, or 49 percent of them were acquired by central banks worldwide. Underpinning the robust growth was investor optimism about potential inclusion in the World Government Bond Index (WGBI), a global benchmark for the sovereign income market operated by the London-based FTSE Russell. The market capitalization-weighted bond index consists of the government bond markets of multiple economies.
President Yoon Suk Yeol was right to veto the main opposition party-led bill to provide blanket per capita cash handouts of 250,000 won ($185) to help revitalize the economy, a senior economist at the OECD said.
"The party has concluded that it should be Rep. Lee and the leadership who should determine the course of the tax," DPK spokesperson Rep. Noh Jong-myun said.
A number of industry leaders as well as figures central to a slew of scandals of great public interest will testify at the National Assembly audit starting next week.
The government has borrowed over 152 trillion ($130 billion) won from the Bank of Korea (BOK) as of end-September, in what an opposition lawmaker has characterized as a practice falling behind global standards, Tuesday.
One in five jobless people failed to find employment despite putting in efforts for over six months, the highest figure since 1999 at the height of the Asian financial crisis, government data showed Tuesday.
The Korean currency could keep strengthening with the won-dollar exchange rate potentially dropping below 1,300 won against the greenback, propelled by its coupling with the Japanese and Chinese currencies, market watchers said Monday.
Nearly 90,000 people have signed up for a government-operated service that restricts unauthorized financial transactions, including credit card issuance, unsecured cards and insurance loans, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said Sunday.