Day: April 2, 2023

Large companies listed on the South Korean main KOSPI bourse will be required to begin issuing key regulatory filings in English next year, the country’s financial and stock exchange regulators said Sunday.

According to the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Korea Exchange, companies with at least 10 trillion won (US$7.63 billion) in assets and those where foreigners own 30 percent or more of total shares will need to submit English-language filings related to the settlement of accounts, legal issuances and other important information within three days after their Korean reports are submitted.

The measure will be expanded to KOSPI-listed companies with 2 trillion won in assets in 2026.

The FSC said it will make constant efforts to help foreign investors get better access to information of the country’s stock markets and make its capital markets more attractive to global funds.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

Fifteen people, including a Vietnamese illegal immigrant, have been arrested for stealing mobile phones and smuggling them into Vietnam, officials said Sunday.

The Vietnamese, who has been detained in the face of a prosecutors’ probe, is suspected of buying stolen mobile phones for as little as 200,000 won (US$156) and reaping around 18 million won in profits by smuggling them into Vietnam between July 2021 and March this year, according to the Seoul Subway Police.

Police also detained eight others on charges of stealing and selling the phones to the Vietnamese national, and referred them to the prosecution.

To reset the stolen devices in order to sell them, police said the suspects sent text messages to the owners of the phones, saying they had found the lost phones and provided a link to a map of the phone’s current location, and asked them to enter their log-in information to view the map.

The phones that were reset were then smuggled into Vietnam through retail traders and export agencies.

Most of the phones were stolen from drunk passengers on the subway.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

North Korea is not making “empty talk” about its nuclear capabilities, Pyongyang’s state media said Sunday, adding that the United States and South Korea are engaging in “wrong behavior of bringing themselves to a grave danger.”

In a commentary, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) strongly criticized the allies’ ongoing joint military drills and their scheme to hold a massive live-fire exercise in June.

“The warmongers’ desperate acts are going to the extremes,” it said in the English-language commentary. It cited the 11-day Freedom Shield exercise held in March.

“Their war hysteria is running up to the climax along with the start of Ssangyong, a joint landing drill,” it added.

The Ssangyong (double dragon) training began March 20, the allies’ first major combined amphibious landing exercise in five years. It is set to end Monday.

The KCNA also took issue with the two sides’ plan to stage their largest-ever “combined joint firepower annihilation drill” in June to mark the 70th anniversary of their alliance.

“This reminds the people and army of the DPRK of June 1950 when they had to be subject to war calamity, and further arousing their high vigilance,” the KCNA said. The DPRK is the acronym for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

It stressed, “The U.S. and its followers should never forget the fact that their rival state has possessed the nuclear attack capability in practice as well as the characteristics of the people and army of the DPRK which do not make empty talk.”

Source: Yonhap News Agency