If you follow Korean companies or travel to Seoul, you have probably noticed that the won seems to have a mind of its own. It weakens when global investors get nervous, it strengthens when chip export...
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are two of the largest companies in Korea, and their quarterly profits can swing from enormous to barely positive within a year or two. Investors abroad often ask the...
When the Bank of Korea (BOK) announces a rate decision, headlines in English usually stop at "held" or "raised." What they rarely explain is why a quarter-point move in Seoul lands so differently on a...
When a Korean shipbuilder announces a large order, the headline usually reads like a sale. In reality it is the start of a multi-year story: steel is cut, payments arrive in installments, and profit i...
Why do some of the world's best-known companies — makers of the phones, chips and ships that sit in global supply chains — trade at lower valuations than similar firms in the US or Europe? Investors h...
When people say the Korean won is "weak" or "strong," they usually mean one number: how many won it takes to buy one US dollar. But for Korea, that number is not just a price on a screen. It sits at t...
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix can report record profits in one year and a sharp drop a year or two later, even though people are still buying phones, laptops and servers the whole time. For investo...
When the Bank of Korea (BOK) changes its policy rate, global headlines tend to treat it as a single number. Inside Korea, the same decision travels along several very different paths: into monthly mor...
A Korean shipyard can announce a record run of new orders, and its profit can still look weak for another year or two. A few years later, when new orders have slowed, earnings can look excellent. Inve...
A fund manager in London runs a screen for cheap stocks with solid earnings. Korean names keep coming up: profitable exporters, global brands, order books stretching years out — trading at a fraction ...
