SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — Leading South Korean companies’ entertainment expenses sank nearly 13 percent in 2018 on a draconian anti-graft law that came into effect two years earlier, government data showed Wednesday. A total of 7,402 companies spent a combined 3.16 trillion won (US$2.66 billion) in 2018, down 12.7 percent from 2016, according [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — Some 17 percent of young students in South Korea are addicted to the internet and smartphones, a government survey suggested Tuesday. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family released the result of its survey of teenagers’ internet and smartphone usage, conducted on 1,331,441 fourth graders of elementary schools and [...]
SEJONG, Aug. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — The employment rate for nine minor cities in South Korea fell in the first half of this year, as the coronavirus pandemic hit job markets, data showed Tuesday. The employment rate for the nine cities, including Jeonju, Osan, Yangsan and Chuncheon, stood at 58.3 percent in the first half, [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of small shareholders in global tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. nearly tripled this year amid massive stock investment by local retail investors, data showed Tuesday. Some 1.45 million investors held a stake of less than 1 percent in the top-cap company as of the end of June, [...]
SEJONG, Aug. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s household income rose in the second quarter from a year earlier, thanks to the government’s emergency handouts to ease the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, a report showed Thursday. The average household earned 5.27 million won (US$4,473) per month in the second, up 4.8 percent from the [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — Sales of instant noodles in South Korea soared to a fresh all-time high in the first half of the year due to the coronavirus outbreak, data showed Thursday. Local shipments of instant noodles, or “ramyeon” in Korean, came to 1.13 trillion won (US$950 million) in the January-June period, up [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Large South Korean companies’ investment surged nearly 16 percent in the first half of the year despite a fall in earnings due to the coronavirus outbreak, a corporate tracker said Wednesday. Combined investments by 374 major businesses in Asia’s fourth-largest economy came to 43.3 trillion won (US$36.6 billion) in [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Users of the global house-sharing platform Airbnb Inc. spent US$2.1 billion in South Korea in 2019, the company said Wednesday. The amount accounted for 4.2 percent of total tourist spending in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, with Airbnb users’ median expenditures standing at $445. Airbnb users and hosts contributed $1.91 billion [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s exports of automobiles dropped by almost 12 percent in July from a year earlier, extending their slump to a fourth month, due mainly to the new coronavirus pandemic that has strained global business activities while weighing on consumer sentiment, data showed Monday. Local carmakers shipped 181,362 units [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s exports of coronavirus test kits have declined since their peak in April, leading to a plunge in stock prices of test kit makers, data showed Monday. With the coronavirus pandemic raging across the globe, many countries had scrambled to import Korean COVID-19 test kits, in a boon [...]