Journalist

Lee Seo-young
  • South Korea’s Four Biggest Banks Sue to Overturn LTV Collusion Fines
    South Korea’s Four Biggest Banks Sue to Overturn LTV Collusion Fines South Korea’s four major commercial banks are taking legal action to challenge the Fair Trade Commission’s sanctions over alleged collusion involving loan-to-value ratios, or LTVs. The financial industry said Thursday that KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana and Woori banks planned to file an administrative lawsuit seeking to overturn the FTC’s penalty decision. The FTC previously concluded the banks restricted competition in the real estate secured-loan market by exchanging LTV-related information and imposed total fines of 272 billion won. The commission said the banks kept LTVs below certain levels to limit loan supply and, as a result, increase interest income. The FTC also said the conduct reduced access to loans for borrowers such as small and midsize enterprises and small business owners. The banking industry has countered that the exchanges amounted to information sharing and do not constitute collusion. It argues LTV is not a competitive factor like price or interest rates, but an internal risk-management standard operated within financial regulators’ rules. Banks also say the FTC’s view is hard to sustain because higher LTVs typically allow larger loans and greater earnings, making it difficult to argue they intentionally lowered ratios to boost profits.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-03-20 18:15:00
  • Musical Actor Nam Kyung-ju Sent to Prosecutors on Rape Allegation
    Musical Actor Nam Kyung-ju Sent to Prosecutors on Rape Allegation Musical actor Nam Kyung-ju, 63, has been referred to prosecutors on a rape allegation, police said. According to police and other officials on Tuesday, Seoul’s Bangbae Police Station last month sent Nam to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office without detention on suspicion of intercourse by abuse of authority. Nam is accused of sexually assaulting a woman, identified only as A, in Seoul last year. A is reported to have left the scene shortly afterward and called the emergency number 112. Nam denied the allegation during police questioning, but police said they determined the suspicion was supported based on related circumstances and forwarded the case to prosecutors. Nam’s Instagram account has been deleted, and no official statement has been released. Nam is considered part of South Korea’s first generation of musical theater actors, along with Choi Jung-won and Park Kalin. He won best actor at the 13th Daegu International Musical Festival in 2019 and is a professor in the performing arts department at Hongik University.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-03-11 20:42:16
  • Kim Yunji Wins Another Silver, Sets South Korea Record for Most Winter Paralympic Medals at One Games
    Kim Yunji Wins Another Silver, Sets South Korea Record for Most Winter Paralympic Medals at One Games Kim Yunji, a 19-year-old rising star in South Korean para sports, added a silver medal on Tuesday to set a new national record for the most medals won by a South Korean athlete at a single Winter Paralympics. Kim finished second in the women’s 10-kilometer interval start cross-country skiing race at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Paralympics, clocking 26 minutes, 51.6 seconds at the Tesero Cross-Country Stadium in Italy. Oksana Masters of the United States won gold. The result gave Kim one gold and two silvers at these Games, the most by a South Korean athlete at one Winter Paralympics. The previous mark was set by Shin Eui-hyun at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games with one gold and one bronze. Kim earlier won South Korea’s first Winter Paralympic gold medal by a female athlete in the women’s 12.5-kilometer individual biathlon and also took silver in the cross-country sprint. South Korea has four medals so far at these Games, including Kim’s three and a bronze by snowboarder Lee Je-hyeok. In wheelchair curling, the mixed doubles team of Baek Hye-jin and Lee Yong-seok has reached the final, guaranteeing at least a silver medal.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-03-11 20:27:00
  • South Korea watchdog to tighten checks on banks’ sales of high-risk products
    South Korea watchdog to tighten checks on banks’ sales of high-risk products The Financial Supervisory Service said it will strengthen oversight of banks’ sales of complex, high-risk financial products and will deploy a separate financial consumer protection inspection team during regular examinations. The move is aimed at tightening controls on the sale of high-risk products at bank counters after a mis-selling scandal involving equity-linked securities tied to Hong Kong’s H Index. The FSS announced the plan on 9 at its “2026 banking sector financial supervision briefing,” outlining its supervision and inspection priorities. The watchdog said it will step up monitoring of sales of complex investment products. It will review how banks are operating a system that limits in-person sales of high-risk products to designated hub branches, and will closely examine sales volumes, excessive promotions, and consumer complaints and dispute cases. During regular inspections, it will form a dedicated consumer protection team to comprehensively review safeguards across the full process of product design, screening and sales. The FSS also said it will strengthen protection of consumer rights by checking business practices that hinder customers from exercising rights, including delays in handling requests for interest-rate reductions and cancellations. It said inspections will also cover whether banks properly provide guidance on debt restructuring under the Personal Debtor Protection Act and whether procedures for managing delinquent loans are appropriate. To support financial system stability, the FSS said it will encourage banks to calculate and manage debt service ratio, or DSR, for internal control purposes and will guide them to set DSR management standards by loan type. It also plans to review quarterly provisioning levels and liquidity management, and to analyze how a high exchange-rate environment and inclusion in the World Government Bond Index, or WGBI, could affect the foreign exchange market. Governance and internal controls at banks will also be reviewed. The FSS said it will check progress and implementation of reforms focused on board independence, fairness and transparency in selecting chief executives, and the reasonableness of performance-based pay. * This article has been translated by AI. 2026-03-09 17:24:00
  • SC First Bank Net Profit Plunges 57% on Hong Kong H-Index ELS Provision, One-Off Costs
    SC First Bank Net Profit Plunges 57% on Hong Kong H-Index ELS Provision, One-Off Costs SC First Bank said its net profit plunged last year, hit by one-time costs including a provision tied to sanctions over Hong Kong H-index equity-linked securities (ELS) and expenses for a special retirement program. The bank said Thursday that net profit for the year totaled 141.5 billion won, down 57.3% from 331.1 billion won a year earlier. The decline was driven largely by sizable one-off charges. In the fourth quarter, the bank booked 88.0 billion won in special retirement costs and set aside 151.0 billion won in provisions related to sanctions over Hong Kong H-index ELS. Net interest income fell as the net interest margin narrowed amid lower market rates. Net interest income came to 1.2076 trillion won, down 2.0% from 1.2321 trillion won the previous year, and the net interest margin dropped 0.16 percentage points over the period. Noninterest income also declined. While wealth management performed well, gains from securities and foreign-exchange derivatives fell, pulling noninterest income down 8.0% to 311.2 billion won from 338.3 billion won. Selling and administrative expenses rose on special retirement costs and higher labor and inflation-related expenses. The bank reported 1.0754 trillion won in such costs, up 17.7% from 913.6 billion won a year earlier. By contrast, total expected credit losses and other provisions fell 16.9% to 106.7 billion won from 128.4 billion won. Assets expanded. Total assets stood at 92.2781 trillion won at the end of last year, up 7.5% from 85.8409 trillion won a year earlier. Profitability indicators weakened. Return on assets was 0.15%, down 0.23 percentage points, and return on equity was 2.56%, down 3.53 percentage points. The ratio of nonperforming loans rose 0.14 percentage points to 0.56%. The bank also said its board approved a year-end dividend of 125.0 billion won and will submit it as an agenda item for a regular shareholders meeting on the 30th. After the dividend, the bank said its BIS total capital ratio was 18.59% and its common equity Tier 1 ratio was 15.65% as of the end of last year, remaining above regulatory requirements.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-03-06 18:04:16
  • KB Kookmin Bank Nominates Yeon Tae-hoon as New Outside Director
    KB Kookmin Bank Nominates Yeon Tae-hoon as New Outside Director KB Kookmin Bank said Thursday its outside director nomination committee recommended one new outside director and three outside directors for reappointment. The committee nominated Yeon Tae-hoon, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Finance, as the new outside director candidate. Yeon graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in economics and earned master’s and doctoral degrees in economics at the University of Michigan. He previously worked at the Korea Institute of Public Finance and the Korea Development Institute, and now researches capital markets and financial consumer protection, among other topics, at the Korea Institute of Finance. Yeon has also served as an outside director at IBK Investment & Securities, Sh Suhyup Bank, Hyundai Card and Korea Growth Investment Corp. He has held roles including a deliberation member at the Credit Recovery Committee and chair of the Financial Services Commission’s conflict management review committee. The bank said he is regarded as having both on-the-ground financial experience and expertise in consumer protection. The committee said it made the final recommendation after six meetings and three rounds of screening and qualification reviews. Outside directors Moon Soo-bok, Kim Sung-jin and Lee Jung-sook were recommended for reappointment for one-year terms. The nominees are to be formally appointed after a vote at the annual shareholders meeting on March 25. Outside director Seo Tae-jong will step down after the shareholders meeting as his maximum term ends.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-03-06 16:24:20
  • SK and Nvidia chiefs hold AI talks over chicken and beer in Santa Clara
    SK and Nvidia chiefs hold AI talks over chicken and beer in Santa Clara SEOUL, February 10 (AJP) - Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group missing from the famous chicken-beer meeting in Seoul among key Korean tycoons during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's visit to South Korea last October, had a separate chimaek moment with Huang in Silicon Valley as SK hynix vies with Samsung Electronics for next-generation memory packages to Nvidia's AI accelerators. According to industry officials on Monday, Chey met Huang on Feb. 5 (local time) at a Korean-style fried chicken restaurant in Santa Clara, California. The venue is known as a favorite of Huang. Chey’s younger daughter, Choi Min-jung, CEO of Integral Health, and Huang’s daughter, Madison Huang, a senior director at Nvidia, accompanied them to underscore the depth of their personal relationship. The talks were reported to have focused on cooperation centered on supplies of next-generation high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. With Nvidia preparing to launch its next AI accelerator, “Vera Rubin,” in the second half of this year, a stable supply of SK hynix’s sixth-generation HBM, known as HBM4, is seen as a key issue. SK hynix currently is responsible for about 70 percent of Nvidia’s HBM3E volume for Blackwell and is said to be assigned with more than 60 percent of the initial HBM4 volume for Vera Rubin. The two companies also likely shared mid- to long-term cooperation plans across next-generation memory, including HBM4E, custom HBM (cHBM), LPCAMM, a low-power DRAM module for servers, and NAND flash. Industry officials said Solidigm’s AI business strategy was also likely on the agenda. SK Group recently changed the name of its U.S. NAND subsidiary and plans to invest about US$10 billion as it pushes to transform Solidigm into an AI solutions company. Some in the industry say cooperation with Nvidia, which has AI solutions spanning autonomous driving and robotics, could expand beyond semiconductors to areas such as building next-generation AI data centers. Chey has been staying in the United States since early this month to personally manage global AI-related networking, the report said. SK Supex Council Chairman Chey Chang-won attended an early-month meeting of the heads of 10 major conglomerates hosted by the president in his place, a move some interpreted as reflecting Chey Tae-won’s focus on major global issues in Silicon Valley, including strengthening ties with Nvidia. 2026-02-10 07:45:18
  • South Korea women win first Asian Badminton Team Championships title, return home
    South Korea women win first Asian Badminton Team Championships title, return home South Korea’s women’s national badminton team, led by world No. 1 An Se Young, returned home Sunday afternoon through Incheon International Airport after winning their first title at the 2026 Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships. The South Korean men’s and women’s teams, coached by Park Joo Bong, swept host China 3-0 in the finals Saturday in Qingdao, China. It was the first time since the tournament began in 2016 that South Korea’s women finished on top. An anchored the run from the group stage through the final, playing first in singles and not dropping a single game. She also told the coach she wanted to keep playing to maintain momentum, helping drive the team’s “One Team Korea” unity. South Korea fielded a full-strength lineup that included An, Kim Ga Eun and the doubles pair Lee So Hee-Baek Ha Na. The team beat Singapore and Taiwan in group play, then defeated Malaysia in the quarterfinals and Indonesia in the semifinals before lifting the trophy. With the result, the women secured a spot in the finals of the BWF World Team Championships for women, the Uber Cup, to be held in Denmark in April. An said the achievement was special because it was earned together, and she pledged strong performances at future world events. The men’s team finished tied for third despite losing ace Seo Seung Jae to a shoulder injury. Led by Kim Won Ho, singles prospects helped the team clinch a berth in the men’s world team finals, the Thomas Cup. Park said he was pleased with the women’s historic first title and the men’s better-than-expected showing, and he praised the potential of the next generation.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-02-09 20:36:00
  • Samsung Coach Kim Hyo Beom Arrives Late, Misses First Half vs. KT
    Samsung Coach Kim Hyo Beom Arrives Late, Misses First Half vs. KT A rare scene unfolded on a pro basketball court as a head coach did not appear before tipoff. The Korean Basketball League game between Suwon KT and Seoul Samsung at KT Sonicboom Arena in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, began at about 7 p.m. Monday with Samsung coach Kim Hyo Beom absent. Kim also skipped the pregame media interview and did not show up on the bench through the end of the first half. Samsung’s coaching staff ran the team in his place. The club said Kim was delayed getting to the arena for personal reasons. Samsung said Kim arrived during the second quarter but could not join the bench while play was ongoing, so he waited off the court. The club said he was expected to take charge from the second half. Samsung, in ninth place in the league, still led 48-41 at halftime against KT despite the coach’s absence.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-02-09 20:24:00
  • Woori, BNK and iM post profit gains and boost shareholder returns
    Woori, BNK and iM post profit gains and boost shareholder returns Woori Financial Group said it posted near-record results as noninterest income rose, offsetting one-time costs. BNK Financial Group and iM Financial Group also reported improved earnings on more diversified revenue, and all three financial holding companies moved to strengthen shareholder-return policies. Woori said on Thursday it earned 3.1413 trillion won in net profit last year, up 1.8% from a year earlier, marking a second straight year above 3 trillion won. The company avoided a profit decline even after booking a 51.5 billion won provision tied to a fine related to alleged loan-to-value ratio collusion; excluding that, the result was effectively a record, it said. Noninterest income rose 25% from a year earlier, reflecting the launch of Woori Investment & Securities and the impact of acquiring Tongyang Life Insurance. BNK said it earned 815 billion won in net profit last year, up 11.9% from a year earlier and the highest since 2021. With interest-income growth slowing, net profit at nonbank units such as BNK Capital and BNK Investment & Securities rose about 30% from a year earlier, supporting the overall result. iM said its 2025 net profit attributable to controlling shareholders totaled 443.9 billion won, up 106.6% from a year earlier. Profit expanded as credit-loss costs at nonbank affiliates eased and profitability recovered at key subsidiaries including iM Securities. The stronger earnings were followed by bigger shareholder payouts. Woori set its cash dividend payout ratio at 31.8%, topping 30% for the first time, and said its effective shareholder return ratio reached 39.8% using tax-exempt dividend resources. Its common equity Tier 1 ratio improved 80 basis points from a year earlier to 12.9%. Woori also plans to expand share buybacks and cancellations this year to 200 billion won, up 33% from a year earlier. BNK decided on a cash dividend of 735 won per share and said it will also carry out share buybacks and cancellations. iM’s board approved a cash dividend of 700 won per common share, up 40% from a year earlier, putting its total shareholder return ratio at a record 38.8%. It also plans to buy back and cancel 40 billion won worth of shares in the first half of 2026. “The key point in this earnings season is that they proved their commitment to shareholder returns with numbers,” a financial industry official said. As value-up plans become more concrete, the official said, financial stocks that had long been undervalued may have a chance to be priced more fairly by the market.* This article has been translated by AI. 2026-02-06 17:27:43