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U.S. stock buying seen keeping won weak through Feb. 2027
SEOUL, July 04 (AJP) - South Korea's won is likely to remain under sustained depreciation pressure through at least February 2027, driven by surging overseas equity investments by Korean households and companies, particularly into U.S. stocks, according to a report released Saturday by the Korea Institute of Finance. The report said the dollar-won exchange rate has undergone a structural upward shift si
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South Korea gasoline prices fall below 2,000 won for seventh straight week
SEOUL, July 04 (AJP) - Retail fuel prices in South Korea extended their decline for a seventh consecutive week, with the nationwide average gasoline price falling below 2,000 won per liter as lower global crude prices and the government's latest fuel price cap took effect. The average price of regular gasoline fell 55.7 won from the previous week to 1,952.1 won ($1.43) per liter during the week of June
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From Starbucks to teen baseball, May 18 mockery carries a dear price
SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) -Starbucks' May 18 controversy continues to reverberate across South Korea, with the country's largest coffee chain under Shinsegae Group paying for the blunder through a dent in sales while a Seoul high school baseball team is seeking forgiveness from a rival school in Gwangju.
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Court terminates Homeplus rehabilitation bid
SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - The Seoul Bankruptcy Court terminated the corporate rehabilitation proceedings of Homeplus on Friday, putting South Korea's second-largest retail chain on a path toward bankruptcy unless a buyer steps forward in the coming weeks. Rehabilitation Division 4 of the court, headed by Jung Jun-young, president of the Seoul Bankruptcy Court, who presided over the case, ruled that the rev
Spiritual Asia (30) The quiet strength of Sikhism: A faith built on service, integrity and freedom
This is the thirtieth installment of AJP's Spiritual Asia series, which explores the religious traditions, philosophical ideas and moral foundations that have shaped Asia's civilizations. In this concluding chapter of our three-part journey through Japanese Shinto, we examine how a faith rooted in reverence for nature was transformed into an instrument of the modern state, and how it later returned to everyday life. SEOUL, July 04 (AJP) - Religion should not be measured solely by the n
by Abe Kwak
Korea-Japan weak currency coupling tells different stories
SEOUL, July 02 (AJP) - For South Korean policymakers battling a persistently weak won, the culprit is relatively straightforward: heavy foreign selling of Korean equities and an insatiable domestic appetite for dollar-denominated assets. The picture is more puzzling in Japan. Despite record foreign buying of Japanese stocks this year, the yen has continued to languish near multi-decade lows, defying the conventional expectation that capital inflows should support a country's currency. The
Bond rally signals sobriety on Korea's economy – weak without chips
SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) - From the look of the sovereign bond market in July, South Korea's economy is running solidly on strong exports while inflation, despite energy shocks from the prolonged Gulf crisis, remains broadly contained around 3 percent, suggesting the Bank of Korea may need no more than one additional rate hike from the current 2.50 percent. Compared with the wild swings in equities and the won's slide to near three-decade lows, South Korea's bond market has remained rem
Korea's chip republic meets the law of semiconductor cycles
SEOUL, July 03 (AJP) -The market has finally started asking the uncomfortable question. For the last 18 months, investors treated AI memory as a one-way trade. High-bandwidth memory (HBM) shortages, exploding AI server demand and the near-duopoly of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix turned South Korea into the center of the global AI hardware story. After Seoul unveiled a string of government-backed semiconductor mega projects swelling above $1 trillion across Yongin, Honam and Chungcheong, inv
Samsung, SK, Hanwha, Hyundai bet $194 bln on southeastern Korea
Seoul weighs tax breaks for SMRs to power Yeongnam industrial push
