SEOUL, Dec. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — Large companies in South Korea have seen their combined free cash flow (FCF) plunge nearly 80 percent over the past year amid concerns over a liquidity crunch stemming from high interest rates, a corporate tracker said Wednesday. The total FCF of 268 out of the country’s top 500 listed [...]
SEJONG, Dec. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly 55 percent of South Koreans believe the COVID-19 pandemic will become a perpetual phenomenon, a survey showed Tuesday. Only 18.7 percent of South Koreans were confident that the COVID-19 pandemic will end at some point, according to the survey released by Statistics Korea. The survey was carried out [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean e-commerce company Interpark Corp. said Tuesday its sales of plane tickets more than tripled in November from a year earlier on the back of pent-up demand for travel. Interpark said sales of plane tickets booked on its website amounted to 121.2 billion won (US$92.8 million) in November, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — The amount of time Korean people spent on the country’s most popular mobile messenger KakaoTalk was restored to the normal level two months after it suffered extensive service disruptions stemming from a fire at a data center, industry data showed Tuesday. Users spent an average of 32.18 minutes using [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly half of the recently married couples in South Korea had no children in 2021, data showed Monday, amid the country’s chronic low birthrate and changing social norms. Some 45.8 percent of the country’s 871,428 couples who were legally married in the five years up to November 2021 did [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s car exports reached an all-time high in November on strong demand for eco-friendly cars and stable supply of automotive semiconductors, data showed Monday. The value of outbound shipments of automobiles came to US$5.4 billion last month, up 31 percent on-year to set the largest monthly record, according [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea was the world’s eighth-largest arms exporter in the 2017-2021 period, accounting for nearly 3 percent of the world’s total defense exports, an annual government report showed Friday. According to the Global Defense Market Yearbook 2022 released by the Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign investors remained net buyers of South Korean stocks for the second straight month in November amid expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve will slow the pace of rate increases and China could ease strict coronavirus restrictions, central bank data showed Friday. Foreigners’ stock investment funds logged a net inflow [...]
SEJONG, Dec. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea added the largest number of jobs in five years last year on the back of the retail and welfare sectors, data showed Thursday. The country’s total jobs reached 25.58 million last year, up 850,000, or 3.5 percent, from the previous year, according to the data compiled by [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — The workforce of major South Korean travel agencies has nearly halved over the past three years due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the number of tour firms also plummeting, industry data showed Thursday. The headcount of industry leader Hana Tour came to 1,204 as of the end of September [...]