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Yoon calls for support from developing nations

‘Empathy than sympathy’ needed for Gyeongju meeting to bear fruits By Cho Jin-seo In a rare case for a finance minister of a G20 country, Yoon Jeung-hyun confesses that he had not known how to eat a banana. No need to feel shame. It was not only him, but all of his friends at Seoul National University’s law department who were once invited to a rich friend’s house, one day back in the 1960s. “The mother of the rich girl treated us with a tray of bananas, but none of us dared to touch them. The mother left the room, thinking that we had already eaten and were full,” he recalled during a lunch with Korean officials stationed in Washington, one of the participants told The Korea Times. “In fact, we didn’t touch them because we had never seen a banana before. But we didn’t want to let the woman know that.” Moments after she left the room, the daughter of the rich family got it. Pretending not to know what was going on, she picked up one of the bananas, peeled the skin and bit the flesh inside, so Yoon and his friends could follow without feeling shamed. The moral o

Debt relief for US is the answer, not FX war

By Shin Jang-sup Professor at National University of Singapore Singapore does not normally use monetary and fiscal policies to boost its economy. This is because if liquidity is disbursed through those policies in the small open economy, their effects mostly spill out abroad with little help to its own economy. The Singapore government therefore relies on the exchange rate policy to counter business cycles. It seems the U.S. economy is currently showing a “small country syndrome” as if it was a Singapore. “Quantitative easing,” an unheralded monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, hardly produces multiplier effects for the domestic economy. This is mainly due to the fact that American households are struggling with debt burdens and are unable to increase spending. U.S. banks, sitting on three trillion dollars of excess reserves, are hard to find good borrowers and they are even calling on loans from existing ones to shore up their own balance sheets. Companies also find it hard to sell their products in the domestic market and cannot increase employment. Meanwhile, liqu

Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry Chairman ...

Flight attendents of budget carrier Jeju Air tout the ...

Korea wants G20 to delay accounting standard consolidation

By Cho Jin-seo Korea is requesting G20 nations delay the consolidation process of global accounting standards, its top financial regulator said Thursday. The move is a rare objection by Korea, the host of the November G20 Seoul Summit. Korea has defined its role at the G20 mainly as an arbiter and a consensus builder among the world’s largest economies. Chin Dong-soo, the chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), said at a press conference that the country will face serious disorder in the financial reporting system if the G20 pushes ahead with its reform plan of accounting standards as planned. It was a plea made to the Financial Stability Board (FSB), which reports to the G20 on financial regulatory issues. The FSB chairman Mario Draghi said at the same press conference that the board will push the world’s two dominant accounting rules ― the U.S. GAAP and Europe’s IFRS ― to create a converged standard by June 2011. This G20 initiative for a new, consolidated rule may bring about a big headache for Korean firms, and a bonanza for global accountin

Global Best Brands in Korea (1)

The Korea Times presents a series of specials highlighting the country’s best global brands to celebrate its 60th anniversary, which falls on Nov. 1. The best brands were picked based on survey results of experts. ― ED. BAT Korea About the brand Since established in 1998, British American Tobacco (BAT) Korea has achieved fast growth in Korea based on such well-known cigarette brands as Kent, Dunhill and Vogue. The company launched ``made-in-Korea’’ products in 2003 at its factory in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province. It also exports the tobacco products made there all over the world. It has been touted as a socially responsible firm as amply demonstrated by numerous awards _ the Sacheon factory was honored with a Commendation from Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2009 and the company received the Exemplary Taxpayer Award from the Minister of Strategy and Finance this year. CEO Name: Stephan Liechti Career: Liechti started his career in tobacco at Rothmans in 1994 and joined BAT after their merger in 1999. He worked in several senior market

SK Networks CEO Lee Chang-kyu, third from left, prepares to ...

Chey Tae-won, third from right, chairman of SK Group, ...

Ted Chung, left, chief executive of Hyundai Card, shakes ...

Waitresses serve customers at a promotional event