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Korea Report - April, 2012.

Topics.

² Saenuri Party won a dramatic victory in general election on 11th.

² Jim Yong Kim has been chosen to be the next president of the World Bank.

² The opposition urged the government to immediately ban the import of US beef.

² NK launched a long-range rocket carrying a small satellite from the Dongchang-ri launch facility.

² NK threatened to wage a “retaliation war” against SKorea.

² Moody's upgraded its outlook on SKorea's sovereign credit rating.

² The current account surplus reached $3.04 bil in April.

² Samsung Electronics (SEC) saw its first-quarter earnings hit an all-time high.

² SEC overtook Nokia as the world’s biggest vendor of mobile-phones.

² HMC and Kia posted all-time high monthly sales in EU market in March.

² SKorea’s forex reserves soared to reach record high of $316.84 bil at the end of April.

² SKorea’s consumer inflation rate recorded 2.5% in April on-year.

² SKorea’s jobless rate decelerated to 3.7% in March, down from 4.2% in Feb.

² Korea won 50.7% of all global orders in the first quarter.

² Big 3 estimate around 50% drop on-year in their operating profit in the first quarter.

² Gazprom expects maximum 40 LNG carriers to be built.

² The industry expects the scrapping of ships reach 50 mil DWT this year.

² Busan saw total container traffic expand 13.7% in Feb on-year.

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