South Korea Financial News

Indian benchmark indices fell almost 1% on Wednesday, snapping their seven-day winning streak, as traders found the pace of the recent run-up in the market excessive. NSE's Nifty fell 181.8 points, or 0.77%, to close at 23,486. BSE's Sensex declined 728.6 points, or 0.93%, to end at 77,288.

Vietnam, which has now emerged as the fastest-growing tourism destination in Southeast Asia. Now, Vietnam has emerged as the third-most-visited country in the region, with 17.5 million international arrivals in 2024, edging ahead of Singapore. It follows Malaysia, which had 25 million visitors, and Thailand, which remains at the top with 35 million. The numbers also make Vietnam, also referred to as the Land of the Ascending Dragon, the regional leader in tourism recovery. Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic brought global travel to a halt, Vietnam has regained 98% of its pre-pandemic tourism business, outpacing all its neighbours, including Thailand (87.5%) and Singapore (86%). The momentum shows no signs of slowing down. Nearly four million international tourists arrived in Vietnam in January and February this year, a 30.2% increase from the same period last year, according to figures from the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) consultation paper, ‘Enhancing Trading Convenience and Strengthening Risk Monitoring in Equity Derivatives,’ issued last month, fulfils a long-standing market demand to increase the economic representativeness of its Open Interest (OI) measurement approach. The proposal will not only help retail investors, but also institutions such as mutual funds that manage retail money.

Donald Trump at the White House on Monday. The investment includes a new $5.8 billion Hyundai Steel plant in Louisiana that will produce over 2.7 million metric tons of steel annually, creating more than 1,400 jobs. The steel plant is expected to supply steel to auto plants in Alabama and Georgia. Of the total, Hyundai also plans to invest $9 billion by 2028 to boost U.S. production capacity to 1.2 million vehicles in the United States and $6 billion to expand strategic partnerships with U.S. companies in autonomous driving, robotics, artificial intelligence, and advanced air mobility, the company said. Hyundai Motor plans to hold an opening ceremony for its new $7.59 billion car and battery factory in Georgia on Wednesday. The automaker has a factory in Alabama, while its affiliate Kia has a plant in Georgia. The two older plants can produce 700,000 vehicles a year and the new Georgia plant will have a 300,000-vehicle production capacity when fully operational. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry had travelled to South Korea in October and met with Hyundai to discuss the investment plan.

foreign selling. The rebound on the heels of a prolonged period of gloom has helped the main indices erase all their 2025 losses. The rupee advanced to 85.63, its strongest this year against the dollar, rising for the ninth day in a row. The NSE Nifty rose 307.95 points or 1.32% to close at 23,658.35. The BSE Sensex rose 1,078.87 points or 1.4% to end at 77,984.38. Both indices are up 5.1% in the six trading sessions. «Monday's upside was due to a combination of short covering, and expectations of some relaxation or less punitive tariffs which were supposed to be implemented on April 2,» said Pankaj Pandey, head of retail research at ICICI Direct.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who was reinstated on Monday as South Korea's acting president, is a technocrat whose experience and reputation as a safe pair of hands transcended party lines and helped him serve in senior posts under five presidents. Known as a seasoned economic, trade and foreign affairs specialist, Han, 75, was serving the second stint as the head of cabinet, when he became acting president on December 14 after President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached by parliament for leading a short-lived martial law. Two weeks later, Han himself was impeached after being accused of aiding Yoon in the martial law declaration and his powers suspended. He denied this but accepted some responsibility for the ensuing crisis by failing to dissuade Yoon from making the surprise move. On Monday, the Constitutional Court overturned his impeachment, restoring his powers to serve as leader while the country awaits the same court's ruling on Yoon's impeachment. In a country sharply divided by partisan rhetoric, Han has been a rare example of an official who has sought to stay out of the political fray.

Kim Jong Un. Traditional allies Russia and North Korea have drawn closer since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Seoul accusing Kim of sending thousands of troops and container loads of weapons to help Moscow fight Kyiv. Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang has officially confirmed the troop deployment, but the two countries signed a sweeping military deal last year, including a mutual defence clause, when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to the nuclear-armed North. Moscow's top security official Sergei Shoigu was visiting North Korea on Friday, Russian news agency TASS reported, the latest in a recent series of high-level exchanges between North Korea and Russia. Shoigu passed on «greetings and best wishes» from Putin to Kim in a meeting with the North Korean leader.

JSW Steel and SAIL among others are likely to gain attention on Wednesday, March 19, after the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) recommended a 12% safeguard duty on the import of certain steel products. Due to this update, the shares of other steel companies like Tata Steel, Jindal Steel and Power, NMDC Steel, and Jindal Stainless may also attract investor attention.

Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it is looking to drive growth as it faced tough questions from shareholders after its failure to ride an artificial intelligence boom made it one of the worst-performing tech stocks last year. The South Korean firm has been suffering from weak earnings and sagging share prices in recent quarters after falling behind rivals in advanced memory chips and contract chip manufacturing, which have enjoyed strong demand from AI projects. «I have never been to a Samsung AGM since I became its shareholder in 2000, but I wanted to see what executives have to say (this time) and what they will do,» a 65-year old shareholder who only gave his family name, Lee, told Reuters ahead of the meeting. «They should go all-in on the memory chip business, where they can excel, or do something about the foundry,» he said. In internal meetings, Samsung has acknowledged it has lost ground. This is particularly true in semiconductors, where it lags SK Hynix in high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that Nvidia and others rely on for AI graphic processing units.

The NSE Nifty surged 325.55 points, or 1.45%, to close at 22,834.30. The BSE Sensex rose 1131.31 points, or 1.53%, to end at 75,301.26. Both indices have risen about 2% in the last two days.

Samsung Electronics must adopt a «do-or-die» mindset, its chairman told executives, to confront the challenges posed by artificial intelligence that are upending the industry, Yonhap news reported Monday. South Korean giant Samsung has been struggling to meet Nvidia's requirements as rival SK hynix has become the US titan's main supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for its AI graphics processing units (GPU). The world's largest memory-chip maker already acknowledged in October that it was facing a «crisis», and admitted questions had arisen about its «fundamental technological competitiveness and the future of the company».

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) designated South Korea as a 'sensitive' country. The U.S. department has not explained why South Korea was added to the list, which can cause curbs on cooperation, though a DOE spokesperson said Seoul faced no new limits on bilateral cooperation in science and technology from the designation. In a statement relayed by the finance ministry after a ministerial meeting, Choi called on South Korean agencies to actively foster understanding with Washington, and for the industry minister to meet with the U.S. Secretary of Energy this week. Despite the DOE assurances over bilateral cooperation not being impacted, politicians in Seoul have traded blame over the sensitive country designation. The main opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung on Monday criticised the current South Korean government, calling the U.S. move a «perfect diplomatic failure» which is feared could limit cooperation between the countries in the high-tech field.

market’s recent decline as healthy. Stocks rose in Australia, Japan and South Korea in early Monday trade, with futures in Hong Kong also pointing to a higher open. The gains came after the S&P 500 jumped 2.1% Friday as the government avoided a shutdown, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 advanced 2.1%. The Golden Dragon index rose 2.7% with Chinese authorities set to announce measures to boost consumption on Monday. The dollar was steady.

retaliatory tariffs until Washington shows respect.

Elon Musk has once again drawn attention to South Korea’s falling birth rates, calling the situation a “catastrophic population collapse.” The billionaire entrepreneur made the statement in response to a post on X (formerly Twitter) that included a stark visualisation of the country’s demographic crisis. The highlighted portion of the post read: “In South Korea, where the total fertility rate is the lowest in the world at 0.68, every 200 fertile-age adults can expect to give life to 68 children; those children will produce 23 grandchildren, who will result in only eight great-grandchildren. That’s a 96 percent population decline over the course of three generations, and that’s if fertility stops decreasing and finally holds steady.” A user reacted to the alarming statistics by stating, “This is such an insane thing to visualise.” Musk replied with a brief but pointed response: “Catastrophic population collapse.”

Donald Trump’s administration are watching Canada to get a preview of what happens when you hit back. Canadian officials have gone hostile in their responses to Trump’s trade war. Ontario Premier Doug Ford slapped a 25% charge on electricity exports to make power more expensive for people in New York and two other states — earning the president’s ire. Mark Carney, the incoming prime minister, called the US “a country we can no longer trust,” and said his new government will keep its retaliatory tariffs in place “until the Americans show us respect.” On Tuesday, the brinkmanship seemed to pay off: Trump started the day threatening to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum to 50%, but by day’s end both sides had pulled back. Ford suspended the electricity tax, prompting Trump to say “I respect that” and drop the metals levy back to 25%. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum — which came into force on US imports on Wednesday — drew a swift response from Canada and the European Union. The government in Ottawa announced new 25% counter-tariffs on about C$30 billion ($20.8 billion) of US-made items, while Brussels laid out countermeasures against US goods worth as much as €26 billion ($28.3 billion). But other metals-exporting countries including Japan and South Korea held off on any immediate retaliation. Even before that widening of the trade war, Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, had issued a warning to other nations. Watch what Trump is doing to Canada, she said. “You’re next.”

Global markets have endured some severe volatility this month as the president looks to ramp up pressure on global partners by imposing or threatening hefty duties on their goods, citing huge trade imbalances.

Steel companies may hold back investments to expand capacity as increasing imports shrink profit margins and eat into their market share, said analysts. India aims to achieve the target of 300 mt crude steel capacity by 2030 under its National Steel Policy. «Steel capacity expansions may slow down in case domestic steel prices are adversely impacted due to increasing imports,» said Amit Bhargava, partner and national head-metals and mining, KPMG in India.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The White House granted a temporary reprieve for many of its tariffs on Canada and Mexico last week, but a similar pause seems less likely for revamped global steel and aluminum tariffs set to go into effect Wednesday. President Trump’s team has repeatedly said there would be no exceptions or exemptions from the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Anupam Rasayan India shares will be in focus on Tuesday after the company signed a 10-year Letter of Intent (LOI) worth $106 million (approximately Rs 922 crore) with a Korean multinational specializing in specialty chemicals. The high-performance niche chemical under this agreement is expected to be supplied from FY26. «This long-term partnership reinforces Anupam’s expertise in delivering advanced chemical solutions and strengthens its presence in high-growth global markets,» the company stated.