SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of foreign tourists who visited South Korea last year is expected to have fallen below the 1 million mark due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. The data from the state-run Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) showed 877,000 foreigners visited the country from January to November, down 64.3 percent [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — The local performing arts scene saw its revenue soar nearly 80 percent in 2021 from a year earlier, thanks to eased social distancing rules and a rising vaccination rate, data showed Monday. The combined revenue of 12,000 theatrical plays, musicals, classical concerts and other performances reached 307.1 billion won [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of smartphone users on 5G mobile networks had topped 20 million as of November for the first time since the service was commercialized in 2019, data showed Monday. The total number of 5G users reached 20.19 million in November last year, accounting for around 28 percent of [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 31 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean artists released an average 3.8 artistic works to the public in 2021, a sharp drop from 7.8 pieces in 2018, attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, a government survey showed Friday. According to the culture ministry’s triennial survey on 5,000 art industry people, the classical music scene was [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 31 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea emitted a total of 701.3 million tons of greenhouse gas in 2019, the environment ministry said Friday. The 2019 figure, confirmed by the Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Research Center, represents a 3.5 percent drop from the 2018 tally, according to the ministry. The decrease came largely from [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s imports via e-commerce reached a new all-time high in 2021 as more people purchased foreign goods online, government data showed Thursday. The country’s e-commerce imports stood at US$4.15 billion in the first 11 months of this year, up 25.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Retail sales in South Korea rose 9.6 percent in November from a year earlier on the back of an annual nationwide shopping event and eased antivirus restrictions, the industry ministry said Thursday. The combined sales of 25 major offline and online retailers reached 13.66 trillion won (US$11.54 billion) last [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Three out of 10 workers believe that workplace bullying is still serious, even though an anti-workplace harassment law has been in place for more than two years, a survey showed Wednesday. According to the survey conducted on 1,000 office workers, 28.9 percent of respondents said they experienced workplace harassment [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Seven out of 10 South Koreans chose China as the biggest security threat to their country among the neighbors, excluding North Korea, a survey showed Wednesday. According to a survey by the state-run Korea Institute of National Unification (KINU) on 1,006 adults, 71.8 percent of the respondents picked China [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of babies born in South Korea sank to a record low in October, data showed Wednesday, highlighting the country’s bleak demographic situation with the chronically low birth rate. A total of 20,736 babies were born in the country in October, down 5.2 percent from a year earlier, [...]