April 29 (Bloomberg) -- GS Caltex Corp., South Korea’s second-largest oil refiner, hired Merrill Lynch & Co. and RHB Investment Bank Bhd. to help it sell what may be the country’s first Islamic bonds, known as sukuk.

The Seoul-based company plans to raise as much as 1 billion ringgit ($278 million) from bonds in dollars and the Malaysian currency and will meet investors in the Middle East and the U.K. next month, Chay Wai Leong, RHB Investment’s chief executive officer, said in a phone interview from Kuala Lumpur today.

“GS Caltex came to us a few months ago, and because there have been no Korean sukuk deals done ever, we have to go through the Ministry of Finance in Korea to educate them on the Islamic structure,” Chay said. “As to sukuk versus a conventional ringgit deal, we haven’t quite decided. We’re still looking at all the pros and cons.”

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