The chief financial regulator said Wednesday that he will help creditors speed up restructuring of steel, petrochemical and shipping companies struggling to stay afloat after being hit hard by low demand in global markets, The Korea Times reported. Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong said he will support companies with potential to recover by injecting fresh money while kicking out corporations which are not sustainable. "We will discuss with other government agencies ways to strengthen competitiveness in the fields and directions for restructuring.

South Korea plans to open a government-led corporate restructuring market to speed up the liquidation of "zombie" companies and resuscitate marginal firms suffering a "temporary" financial stress, Xinhua reported. "Corporate restructuring led only by creditor banks faced limitations. It needs to encourage various market players to join it, and market-centered restructuring is preferred," Lee Myung Soon, director general of Financial Services Commission's financial and corporate restructuring policy bureau, told foreign correspondents in Seoul Friday.

South Korean exports in August plunged 14.7% from a year ago, Business Insider reported. This was much worse than the 5.9% decline expected by economists. And it was the biggest drop since August 2009. This is a troubling sign, as Korea's exports represent the world's imports.

The financial regulator will set up companies specializing in debt restructuring programs next year, seeking to let them take over jobs from lenders struggling to manage debt-driven corporations, The Korea Times reported. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said Friday it will establish debt-restructuring companies by collecting funds from banks. About 10 financial institutions are expected to join the project, including the state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB) and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Eximbank). "How much do bankers know about the shipbuilding industry?

While other countries fret over banks that are too big to fail, South Korea is grappling with the concept of systemically important human beings. Last week President Park Geun-hye announced a special pardon for Chey Tae-won, scion of the founding family of SK Group, South Korea’s third-biggest chaebol conglomerate. Mr Chey was halfway through a four-year jail sentence for embezzling more than $40m from SK companies — his second conviction for defrauding shareholders. But the country’s main business lobby groups campaigned for Mr Chey’s release on the basis of his importance to the economy.

South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd said on Monday it would sell non-core assets, and shut down or exit non-essential units as part of restructuring after a multi-billion dollar loss in the April-June quarter, The Economic Times reported. Daewoo Shipbuilding late last month reported a provisional second-quarter operating loss of 3.03 trillion won ($2.61 billion), citing construction delays on offshore projects such as oil and gas rigs.

With youth unemployment near a 15-year high and the government planning to raise the retirement age, intergenerational conflict over jobs is rising in South Korea, Bloomberg News reported. The jobless rate for workers aged 15 to 29 touched 11 percent earlier this year and is about four times higher than for those aged 40 and above. At the other end of the spectrum, Korea has an underdeveloped pension system and the highest elderly poverty rate in the OECD, as companies push employees in their fifties into early retirement to contain costs.

The plight of South Korea’s 6m contract workers and the polarisation of the 18m-strong workforce goes to the heart of the country’s reform challenge, the Financial Times reported. President Park Geun-hye has put the labour market at the core of structural reforms aimed at reviving economic growth. South Korea’s economy grew just 0.4 per cent in the last three months of last year from the previous quarter — the slowest pace for two years. “Our economy is at a crossroads,” she said recently in a meeting with business leaders.

South Korea’s government is fighting to address the dangers of the nation’s fast-rising household debt burden — even as critics accuse it of stoking the credit boom through deregulation aimed at boosting the housing market, the Financial Times reported. Economists have raised fears over the country’s heavy household debt, which has risen steadily since the late 1990s to more than 160 per cent of disposable incomes at the end of last year — one of the highest levels of any developed nation.

South Korean bulker operator Daebo International Shipping has filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York, TradeWinds News reported. The Chapter 15 petition follows an application to commence rehabilitation proceedings in the Seoul Central District Court, which was submitted on 11 February 2015. Since then, at least five creditors have filed lawsuits against Daebo and its affiliates in the US, which is why observers say they aren't surprised by today’s revelation.