South Korean and Vietnamese companies signed 73 business deals on tech, energy and infrastructure on Thursday as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung visited Hanoi, a ‌list seen by Reuters showed. The agreements, which were mostly non-binding with no value mentioned, followed the signing a day ‌earlier of 12 cooperation pacts at a meeting between Lee and Vietnam's top leader To Lam, including on Korean possible investment in a new nuclear ​plant in southern Vietnam.

The Middle East crisis and prolonged U.S. interest rate hikes are squeezing Korea's construction sector, triggering massive job cuts at major companies and a surge in bankruptcies among smaller contractors, The Korea Times reported. Cost pressures have deepened due to the conflict in the Middle East, which has caused severe supply disruptions of naphtha, a key petrochemical feedstock, heightening the financial strain on builders. The broader economic downturn is driving the industry to downsize rapidly.

Bank of Korea Governor Shin Hyun-song, who began his four-year term Tuesday, delivered his first address in office prioritizing central bank digital currencies and bank-issued deposit tokens while omitting any mention of stablecoins, Decrypt.com reported.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has nominated Shin Hyun-song, a senior Bank for International Settlements official, as the country’s next central bank governor, the Wall Street Journal reported. Shin will replace departing Bank of Korea Governor Rhee Chang-yong, whose four-year term ends on April 20, Lee’s office said in a statement on Sunday. The nominee joined the BIS in 2014 and currently serves as economic adviser and head of the monetary and economic department at the Switzerland-based institution, often known as a bank for central banks.

A growing number of residents in Seoul are falling into irrecoverable debt, with new city data showing that people in their 60s and older now make up the majority of personal bankruptcy applicants, The Korea Herald reported. Six out of every 10 individuals who sought personal bankruptcy assistance through the Seoul Financial Welfare Counseling Center last year were aged 60 or above, according to a report released Tuesday. The center analyzed 1,192 valid bankruptcy applications filed in 2025 as part of its annual review of bankruptcy counseling cases.

Courts in South Korea will use a new set of guidelines in rehabilitation hearings to write off people’s crypto debts in an attempt to stop citizens from going bankrupt, DLNews.com reported. The new rules will see three courts, opened this month in the cities of Daejeon, Daegu, and Gwangju, exclude debts incurred from stock or cryptocurrency investments from liquidation calculations. And this, in turn, will reduce the overall amount debtors need to pay their creditors in personal rehabilitation proceedings, South Korean media outlet EToday reported.

South Korea's exports extended their ‌growth streak to a ninth ‌month in February as strong chip sales ​continued to underpin overall shipments even as uncertainties regarding U.S. tariffs cloud the outlook, Reuters reported. Exports from Asia's fourth-largest economy, ‌a bellwether ⁠for global trade, increased 29.0% in February from a ⁠year earlier to $67.45 billion, trade data showed. Imports gained 7.5%. The preliminary trade balance stood at $15.51 billion in February.

South Korean regulators are facing increased scrutiny after they failed to discover an issue with crypto exchange Bithumb’s internal systems, which led to $43 billion in Bitcoin accidentally being credited to user’s accounts earlier this month, Decrypt.com reported. Korea’s Financial Services Commission and Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) had both reviewed Bithumb at least three times since 2022, according to a local report from The Korea Times—yet the pair never found a structural input issue that ultimately led to the problem.

South Korea's Bithumb said on Wednesday that serious flaws had left the crypto exchange's internal system susceptible to potential sabotage and failed to prevent an erroneous transfer of more than $40 billion in assets last week, Reuters reported. The country's second-largest virtual asset exchange said it accidentally gave away about 620,000 bitcoins to customers during a promotional event, instead of 620,000 won ($426), triggering a 17% slump in bitcoin's price.