South Korea

South Korea’s inflation slowed more than expected to the central bank’s target, opening the door for monetary officials to conduct a policy pivot as soon as next month if home prices also show signs of easing, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices advanced 2% in August from a year earlier, moderating from a 2.6% clip in July, the statistics office reported Tuesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast the pace of price growth would ease to 2.1%. The deceleration was amplified somewhat by comparisons with last year, when price growth surged on higher energy costs.

South Korea’s financial market regulator has asked lenders with exposure to troubled real estate project finance loans to finalize their cleanup plans by Sept. 6, setting a tight deadline after growth in risky loans exceeded the regulator’s previous estimates, Bloomberg News reported. Project finance exposure of all financial institutions stood at 216.5 trillion won ($162 billion) as of June 2024, of which at least 21 trillion won, or 9.7%, was risky, the Financial Supervisory Service, the Korean financial watchdog, said on Thursday.

South Korea’s central bank held interest rates steady but cut its inflation and growth forecasts for the year and signaled that it will pivot to easing in the coming months, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Bank of Korea on Thursday kept its benchmark seven-day repurchase rate unchanged at a 15-year high of 3.50% for a 13th consecutive time—the longest such run in the country. Twenty-four of the 27 analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal ahead of the decision had expected no rate change in August, but all forecast a rate cut in October or November. BOK Gov.

South Korea announced a series of steps intended to increase housing supplies as it tries to temper a rebounding property market that has frustrated potential buyers and made the central bank cautious about a policy pivot, Bloomberg News reported. The government of President Yoon Suk Yeol plans to ease restrictions on redevelopment projects, help speed up the construction of apartments and provide loan guarantees to developers, according to a Finance Ministry statement that contained a slew of measures.

“Back in the day,” said Lim Hyung-kyu, a retired Samsung Electronics executive now in his 70s, “my weeks were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday, Friday,” the New York Times reported Mr. Lim joined Samsung, South Korea’s largest company, in 1976 and rose through the ranks to chief technology officer. For much of his 30-plus years at Samsung, working on the weekends was normal — and legal under the nation’s labor laws. “I didn’t mind,” Mr. Lim said. “It was fun for me.” Things are different now.

South Korea’s headline inflation picked up at a stronger-than-expected pace in July, reaccelerating due to higher prices for agricultural and oil products, after easing for three consecutive months, the Wall Street Journal reported. The benchmark consumer-price index rose 2.6% from a year earlier, following a 2.4% gain in June, the country’s statistics office said Friday. Compared with the prior month, the index rose 0.3% in July compared with the median forecast of a 0.2% increase. In June, it fell 0.2% from the previous month.

A Montenegrin appeals court on Thursday upheld a ruling by a lower court to hand over a South Korean mogul known as “the cryptocurrency king” to his native country, rejecting a bid to extradite him to the United States, the Associated Press reported. The move follows a months-long legal saga in the case of Do Kwon, the Terraform Labs founder who was arrested in Montenegro last year. Both South Korea and the U.S. had requested Do Kwon’s extradition from Montenegro. Various Montenegrin courts in the past months have brought and overturned multiple rulings to extradite Kwon either to U.S.

TMON started offering belated refunds to customers, Friday, after more than a thousand enraged consumers flocked to the headquarters of the cash-strapped e-commerce platform, the Korea Times reported. This came shortly after WeMakePrice, another online shopping platform mired in a similar liquidity crisis, initiated refunds the day before. Early this week, concerns about the potential insolvency of both firms emerged when their sellers abandoned the platforms due to delayed payments.

South Korea’s economy slowed at a sharper-than-expected pace in the second quarter on sluggish private consumption and weak business investments, losing steam after a solid recovery in the previous quarter, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product in Asia’s fourth-largest economy expanded 2.3% year-over-year during the April-June period, slower than the prior quarter’s revised 3.3% growth, Bank of Korea preliminary data showed Thursday. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the economy shrank 0.2% following the first quarter’s 1.3% expansion, according to the central bank.