SEOUL, Sept. 10 (Korea Bizwire) — A new government-commissioned study has found that nearly four in ten South Korean adolescents view e-cigarettes as either a substitute for conventional cigarettes or a tool to quit smoking, underscoring the growing influence of targeted marketing campaigns by tobacco companies. The report, released Tuesday by Sahmyook University at the [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Platform and special employment workers in South Korea, long excluded from basic labor protections, earn far below the legal minimum wage and face chronic job insecurity, according to a new government-backed study that is fueling calls for urgent reform. A report by the Korea Labor Institute estimated that about [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s central bank has warned that failing to act decisively on climate change could leave the nation facing prolonged inflationary pressures as extreme heat and heavy rainfall increasingly disrupt prices. In a report released Monday, the Bank of Korea found that a one-degree Celsius “heat shock,” defined as the [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — For the first time, older workers now make up a larger share of full-time employees at South Korea’s major corporations than younger recruits, underscoring the deepening generational divide in the country’s labor market. A report released Sunday by the Korea Employers Federation found that employees aged 55 to 59 in [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s gender wage gap at publicly listed companies grew wider last year, even as the gap in average tenure between men and women narrowed, according to new government data. An analysis of 2,980 corporate annual reports for 2024, released Friday by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Once regarded as isolated personal misfortunes, “lonely deaths” — people dying alone and unnoticed — are increasingly being understood in South Korea as symptoms of systemic failure. A government-commissioned study released Friday portrays the phenomenon as a “social disaster” demanding urgent intervention. According to the report, prepared by the Korea [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 5 (Korea Bizwire) –Demand for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels among major television and monitor makers is expected to see a boost throughout the remainder of 2025, industry data showed Friday, a trend likely to benefit LG Display Co., a leading OLED supplier. According to global market research firm Omdia, LG Electronics Co. [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean women not only earn far less than men during their working lives but also receive significantly smaller pensions in retirement, according to new research presented Thursday by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The study, conducted by senior researcher Jang Jin-hee of the KCTU’s Central Research [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea has seen its marriage and birth patterns shift dramatically over the past three decades, with the number of marriages nearly cut in half, births falling by two-thirds, and cross-cultural unions rising sharply, government data showed Wednesday. According to Statistics Korea, marriages peaked at 434,900 in 1996 but dropped [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — A government-funded study, quietly withheld during South Korea’s contentious pension reform debate, has surfaced with stark warnings that elderly poverty could worsen dramatically under the current system, raising questions over transparency and policy priorities. The report, produced last December by researchers at the National Pension Research Institute, projected that if the [...]