Korea's shares open higher amid rate hike woes

A screen in Hana Bank's trading room in central Seoul shows stock and foreign exchange markets open on Thursday. [NEWS1]

Stocks opened higher Thursday amid lingering concerns over more interest rate hikes.

The benchmark Kospi had gained 18.54 points, or 0.77 percent, to 2,436.22 in the first 15 minutes of trading.

The Bank of Korea is scheduled to hold its rate-setting meeting later in the day. It raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point in January to 3.5 percent to tackle persistently high inflation. It was its seventh straight rate hike since April last year.

Overnight, Wall Street ended mixed after a summary of the U.S. Federal Reserve's recent meeting reaffirmed the market fears that the U.S. central bank could keep raising borrowing rates to bring down inflation.

The minutes showed inflation was "well above" the central bank's 2 percent target.

And while the pace of price increase has slowed in recent months, it said "substantially more evidence of progress across a broader range of prices would be required to be confident that inflation was on a sustained downward path."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.26 percent, and the S&P 500 slid 0.16 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 0.13 percent.

In Seoul, most big-cap stocks opened higher.

Samsung Electronics added 1.15 percent, and chip maker SK hynix gained 1.8 percent.

Battery maker LG Energy Solution rose 0.79 percent, and LG Chem gained 0.75 percent.

Automaker Hyundai Motor went up 0.98 percent, and its affiliate Kia gained 0.67 percent.

Samsung Biologics increased 0.25 percent, and Celltrion climbed 0.27 percent.

The local currency was trading at 1,303.7 won against the dollar as of 9:15 a.m., down 1.2 won from the previous session's close.

Yonhap