SEOUL, April 19 (Korea Bizwire) — For smartphone users, one of the most onerous burdens is the fees charged for data use. When consumers select their rate plans, the first thing they tend to look into is how much data is available with various plans at different price points. In this regard, the South Korean [...]
SEOUL, April 18 (Korea Bizwire) – Household loans extended by local banks rose at a fast clip in March due to a large increase in mortgage loans, central bank data showed Monday. Outstanding household loans extended by lenders here came to 649 trillion won (US$564.2 billion) as of end-March, up 4.9 trillion won from the [...]
SEOUL, April 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Investors have pumped in more cash in bond funds than stock funds so far this year as they seek more stable returns, a fund rating and consulting company said Friday. Domestic bond-focused funds have seen a cash inflow of 1.37 trillion won (US$1.2 billion) this year through April 12, KG Zeroin [...]
SEOUL, April 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Illegal loan sharks are lending money at sky-high interest rates of as much as 1,630 percent per year. According to data from the Consumer Loan Finance Association (CLFA), the total amount of money borrowed from loan sharks last year was 14.7 billion won, and the average length of a loan [...]
SEOUL, March 29 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean credit and debit card spending jumped 8.8 percent last year from a year earlier as consumers increasingly favor using cards both for small-sized daily settlements and big tax payments, government data showed Tuesday. The card-based expenditure reached 667.1 trillion won (US$572 million) in 2015, up from 613.2 [...]
SEOUL, Mar. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — A growing number of South Korean households had difficulties paying off their debt with their income last year, data showed Sunday, raising concerns over their financial stability and shrinking domestic consumption. “Marginal households” whose debt-to-disposable income ratio is over 40 percent tallied at 1.58 million, accounting for 14.8 percent [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) – The average amount of debt that Koreans are declaring when applying for personal bankruptcy is getting lower and lower. The phenomenon indicates that many are having difficulties handling even low debt levels without depending on protection offered by bankruptcy. The Korea Legal Aid Corporation analyzed personal bankruptcy data between 2012 [...]
SEJONG, March 3 (Korea Bizwire) – Data shows that one out of two artists in Korea has another job, because it is difficult to earn a living only through their craft, while 20 percent receive financial support from the government or other public organizations. According to a survey conducted with the participation of 5,800 artists [...]
SEOUL, Feb.23 (Korea Bizwire) – A picture of a man’s hand holding a mobile phone shaped device that resembles a POS (point of sale) terminal, also known as a credit card machine, created a great buzz on the internet. The user who uploaded the picture on Facebook captioned the photo as a new way of [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – Samsung Electronics Co. said Saturday it plans to release its mobile payment system Samsung Pay in major markets, including China, next month, speeding up its efforts to expand the presence of the platform amid the rise of rivalry services. Samsung Pay, first released in South Korea and the United [...]