SEOUL, Mar. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Despite the rising cost of living in South Korea, premium supermarkets are quickly gaining popularity among high-income earners, with a focus on quality over quantity. The popularity of premium products as a recent retail industry trend has inspired a number of supermarket chains including E-Mart and Lotte Mart, as market [...]
SEOUL, March 16 (Korea Bizwire) — The Ministry of Health and Welfare has announced plans to develop new funeral facilities, pushing the cremation rates past 90 percent by 2022. The new plan will see a total of 52 new crematoriums built across South Korea over the next five years, with 23 scheduled in Gyeonggi Province alone, [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have discovered a part of the brain that triggers the ‘desire to possess’. The KAIST research team led by professors Kim Dae-soo and Lee Phill-seung said on Thursday they had discovered that a portion of the medical preoptic area, a [...]
GANGNEUNG, South Korea, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea reached the semifinals of the wheelchair curling competition at the PyeongChang Winter Paralympics on Thursday after finishing top of the qualifying round. The team of Seo Soon-seok, Bang Min-ja, Cha Jae-goan, Jung Seung-won and Lee Dong-ha beat China 7-6 in their last qualifying match at [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Songs from idol group Wanna One’s unreleased album have been leaked online, the group’s management agency said Thursday. “We’ve learned that music files were leaked Wednesday and are currently looking into the matter,” a representative from YMC Entertainment, the group’s management agency, said. The representative added, “We’re disappointed and [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of South Korean students in the U.S. is decreasing, due in part to strict immigration policies championed by President Donald Trump. The number of South Koreans who entered the U.S. last year on F1 visas, which are issued to international students, stood at 22,856, down 9.9 percent from [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) — A new report has revealed that both positive and negative global consumer sentiment is growing towards South Korean pop culture, signaling signs of a love and hate relationship. The 2017 report from the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) released on Wednesday looked into the international domination of South [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign currency deposits at banks in South Korea dropped for the second-straight month in February amid the strong U.S. dollar trend, central bank data showed Thursday. Foreign currency deposits held by banks here reached US$80.96 billion at the end of February, down $940 million from a month earlier, according to the data compiled by the Bank of Korea (BOK). It said [...]
SEJONG, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Monthly expenditures on private education here reached an all-time high last year amid a steady drop in the number of students, data showed Thursday. Monthly spending on private education averaged 271,000 won (US$254) per child in 2017, up 5.9 percent, or 15,000 won, from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea. It marked the largest monthly total since [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Woowa Brothers Corp., a South Korean startup that operates the country’s most popular food dlivery app, “Baedal Minjok,” said Thursday that it is currently developing an autonomous delivery robot. The self-driving robot – named “Dilly” — is being co-built by a team of researchers from Korea University and is expected to be commercialized [...]