Key View

• South Korea's new supplementary budget will offer vehicle sales some support but won't be able to prevent the market from contracting in 2019.
• The diesel scrappage scheme, coupled with the growing trend of banning older diesel-powered cars from large cities and the growing trend of consumers shunning diesel vehicles, will see the

Key View: 

• Poor service quality and mismatched expectations have been the biggest hurdle to greater 5G uptake.
• Tariffs are expected to be lowered in order to entice customers to the new networks.
• Operators will eventually resort to selling VAS and content over 5G to drive revenues once a critical mass of subscribers is reached.

The Ministry

South Korean IPO activity is in a slump in H119, but we remain positive in our outlook for the Korea Exchange (KRX)’s  standing as an increasingly important bourse for new listings in Asia over the long term. After high hopes for first-time share sales at the start of the year, 2019 has started poorly for floats in the country and we see little

Key View:

• We at Fitch Solutions maintain our forecast for the Bank of Korea (BoK) to keep its base rate on hold at 1.75% through end-2019, with risks to the downside.
• Our view is informed by the BoK’s dovish comments, declining growth amid a challenging external outlook, and continued muted inflation below the BoK’s target level.

The Bank of

Key View:

• South Korea’s crude oil imports averaged 3.06mn b/d in 2018, flat versus the previous year, as slow economic growth and mediocre domestic demand growth counterbalanced strong export demand from regional emerging markets.
• The bearish narrative also feeds through to inform our long-term outlook, as stricter emissions laws across a

Key View:

• Pricing for 5G services will be highly dependent on 4G saturation; markets with high concentrations of 4G subscribers will find it difficult to price 5G significantly higher than current LTE services.
• Content will be needed to differentiate early 5G networks and give operators a competitive advantage.

South Korean mobile operators

Key View:

• We estimate South Korea’s construction industry to contract by 0.2% in 2018, ahead of official data releases, due to dampened construction activity.
• A combination of sluggish economic growth, cooling housing market and a minimum wage hike will outweigh the effects of a slight increase in infrastructure budget. We maintain our negative

• We at Fitch Solutions forecast South Korea’s economy to continue underperforming its North Asian peers in 2019, growing by 2.3% (versus a weighted average of 4.5% for the region).
• Export demand across North Asia will be negatively impacted by a re-escalation of US-China trade tensions and South Korea will likely face additional headwinds from a

Key View:

• Softbank’s major investment into Coupang affirms our view of South Korea’s e-commerce market being the global outperformer.
• Confirms our view that the impact on the investment community of the Khashoggi incident has been muted, paving the way for Saudi Arabia - through Softbank - to continue investing in high growth tech players.

So