SEOUL, Jan. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — Major South Korean companies spent more than 5 trillion won (US$4.04 billion) in 2022 to help cut air pollution and promote workplace safety as part of their so-called environment, social and governance (ESG) management, a report said Wednesday. The country’s top 100 firms by sales invested 5.44 trillion won [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — Bills and coins that the South Korean central bank discarded due to damage grew 2.3 percent in 2022 as increased banknotes were redeemed amid high interest rates, data showed Tuesday. A total of 412.68 million damaged bills and coins were taken out of circulation last year, down from 403.52 [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — U.S. beef accounted for more than 50 percent of South Korea’s total imports of the meat in 2022, taking up the top spot for six years, industry data showed Tuesday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy imported 256,910 tons of American beef last year, or 54.1 percent of its total beef imports [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s exports of K-pop albums hit a fresh high last year, data showed Monday, as limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continued to push up demand for physical albums. K-pop album exports hit US$233.113 million in 2022, up 5.6 percent from a year ago, according to import and [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — The proportion of self-employed people in South Korea touched a record low in 2022 in the wake of the prolonged coronavirus pandemic, data showed Monday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy had 5.63 million self-employed people as of end-December, accounting for 20.1 percent of the 28.09 million employed in the country, according [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s population shrank last year, continuing its downward trend for three years in a row, with the number of single-person households close to 10 million, government data showed Sunday. The Ministry of Interior and Safety said the country’s registered population stood at 51,439,038 as of Dec. 31 of [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s exports of information and communication technology (ICT) products hit a fresh high last year on strong overseas demand for chips and mobile phones, data showed Thursday. Outbound shipments of ICT products rose 2.5 percent on-year to US$233.3 billion for 2022, outnumbering the previous high of $227.6 billion [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Household loans extended by banks in South Korea declined for the first time in 18 years last year, due mainly to higher borrowing costs, the central bank’s data showed Thursday. Banks’ outstanding household loans decreased by 2.6 trillion won (US$2.09 billion) to 1,058.1 trillion won, according to the data [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — More than half of South Koreans don’t care about the nationality of the next head coach of the men’s national football team, a survey showed Wednesday. Hankook Research polled 1,000 South Koreans over the age of 18 from Dec. 23 to 26 on South Korean football. Among the respondents, [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea reported the largest job additions in more than 20 years in 2022, data showed Wednesday, as the country gradually returned to pre-pandemic normalcy. The number of employed people came to 28.08 million in 2022, up 816,000 from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Statistics [...]