SEOUL, Feb. 28 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s dependency on Japanese materials and parts fell to an all-time low last year following Tokyo’s control of exports of key products bound for Seoul, the industry ministry said Monday. Imports of Japanese materials, parts and equipment came to US$39.5 billion in 2021, accounting for 15.9 percent of [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea ranked fifth in terms of the global vehicle production last year, retaining the spot for the second consecutive year, amid efforts to minimize the fallout from the pandemic-caused global chip shortages, a report showed Monday. The combined vehicle output by South Korean carmakers, including Hyundai Motor Co. [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 25 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s fisheries output rebounded last year from the previous year on the back of increased fish stocks and expanded fishing grounds, data showed Friday. Total fisheries output amounted to 3.82 million tons last year, up 2.9 percent from a year earlier, according to Statistics Korea. The 2021 tally [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s total arable land dropped for the ninth consecutive year in 2021 as rice paddies shrank amid falling consumption of rice, data showed Friday. The country’s arable land totaled 1.55 million hectares — slightly more than three times the size of the U.S. state of Delaware — as [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 24 (Korea Bizwire) – COVID-19 accounted for one in five to six hospital transfers by the 119 emergency medical service in Seoul last year, the city government said Thursday. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Fire & Disaster Headquarters, there were a total of 551,647 emergency ambulance dispatches in the capital last year and [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean household income rose for the second quarter in a row in the fourth quarter of last year thanks to an economic recovery amid eased antivirus curbs, data showed Thursday. The average household earned 4.64 million won (US$3,876) per month in the October-December period, up 6.4 percent from [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Employment for wage workers in South Korea grew at a slow clip in the third quarter of 2021 from three months earlier amid the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Thursday. The number of paid employee jobs came to 19.6 million as of end-September, up 2.6 percent, or 491,000, from a [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s total fertility rate hit a record low last year as the number of childbirths continued to fall, data showed Wednesday, underlining the country’s bleak demographic situation. The country’s total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime — came to 0.81 [...]
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — More than half of South Koreans support the acquisition of nuclear weapons either through indigenous development or the deployment of U.S. assets, a survey showed Tuesday. When asked to choose between the two options, an overwhelming majority of those surveyed favored South Korea developing its own weapons, according to [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s filmmaking industry contracted for a second straight year in 2021 due mainly to the yearslong COVID-19 pandemic, government data showed Tuesday. The aggregated revenues of the local film market, which includes domestic sales of movie tickets, and online releases and exports, reached 1.02 trillion won (US$855 million) [...]