SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s trade deficit with Japan edged up in the first 10 months of the year, data showed Thursday, as a local boycott of Japanese consumer goods shows signs of losing steam. Seoul posted a trade deficit of US$16.56 billion in the January-October period, compared with $16.42 billion during [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s national debt is expected to soar over the next four years, which may have a negative impact on the country’s creditworthiness, a report said Monday. In particular, Seoul’s interest-bearing state debt is likely to rocket nearly 78 percent over the period based on the government’s 2020-24 fiscal [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Major foreign investment banks (IBs) have downgraded their forecasts for South Korea’s economic growth following the resurgence of the coronavirus here, a report showed Monday. As of end-September, nine major global IBs, including Barclays and Goldman Sachs, forecast Asia’s fourth-largest economy to shrink 1.4 percent this year, compared with [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea performed relatively better in terms of economic growth over the second quarter of the year compared to other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), data showed Sunday. South Korea’s economy contracted 3.2 percent on-year in the April-June period, which marked the smallest decrease [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s negative economic growth is expected to be inevitable for this year in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, officials have said. Local bureaucrats’ growing pessimism about Asia’s fourth-largest economy comes as economic activity has been battered by tougher social distancing measures in the greater Seoul area in [...]
SEJONG, Aug. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s economy is likely to shrink less than expected this year thanks to its successful response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Tuesday. In its latest report on South Korea, the Paris-based club of major economies predicted Asia’s fourth-largest economy will [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean households scrambled to pile up cash in the first quarter of the year amid growing uncertainty stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, central bank data showed Tuesday. Cash held by households and nonprofit organizations stood at 90.1 trillion won (US$75.9 billion) as of the end of March, up [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s economic sluggishness has eased on diminishing negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a state-run think tank said Sunday. South Korea’s daily new virus cases spiked more than 900 in late February, but the COVID-19 curve has since flattened sharply in recent months. The decline in infections has [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean consumers purchased far fewer nonessential items in the first quarter than normal due to economic uncertainty sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Sunday. The combined essential spending came to 84.81 trillion won (US$71 billion) in the January-March period, accounting for 40.56 percent of total household expenditures, [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s economy contracted 3.3 percent in the second quarter from a quarter earlier, but it fared well compared with other major economies, data showed Sunday. South Korea’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was the second highest among the 14 countries that included the United States, China, Germany [...]