SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s younger generation views childbirth as both deeply rewarding and uniquely burdensome, according to a new international survey that highlights the country’s persistent struggle with low fertility. A report released Sunday by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, based on a 2024 survey of adults aged 20 [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s airports handled a record number of passengers in 2025, as a surge in overseas travel more than offset a decline in domestic flights, underscoring the continued strength of outbound demand in a post-pandemic travel market. According to data released Friday by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Koreans spend nearly 250 million won (about $190,000) per person on medical care over their lifetimes, according to a new analysis that underscores how rapidly rising healthcare costs are becoming concentrated in old age as the population grows older. A report released Wednesday by the Health Insurance Research Institute [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean teenagers are spending more than three hours a day watching online video content, with short-form clips rapidly overtaking longer videos as their dominant mode of media consumption, according to a new national survey. The findings were released on Wednesday by the Korea Press Foundation in its 2025 survey [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s long-running legal battle against tobacco companies is drawing renewed attention as new research shows that smoking has imposed an enormous and growing burden on the national health insurance system. According to a study released Monday by the National Health Insurance Service’s research arm, smoking-related medical costs totaled an [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s demographic shift toward an aging and increasingly solitary population accelerated in 2025, with people aged 65 and older now accounting for more than one-fifth of the country’s registered residents, government data showed, underscoring mounting social and economic challenges for the nation. According to an annual population analysis released [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean families are spending far more on private education than they did a decade ago, underscoring how deeply supplemental tutoring has become embedded in the country’s competitive education system. Household spending on private education — including hagwons, or for-profit after-school academies — reached nearly 29.2 trillion won ($20.2 billion) [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Only 36.7 percent of Japanese people said they support efforts to provide diplomatic support to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula, hovering well below the global average, a survey showed Tuesday. The percentage of Japanese citizens who backed the idea of offering economic and military support also stood at [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly one in 20 South Koreans has limited monthly social interaction through mobile communications, highlighting a growing segment of the population at risk of social isolation, according to a government-backed data analysis released on Monday. The findings, published by the National Data Agency, mark the first nationwide statistical attempt to [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s fried chicken industry has crossed a symbolic threshold, with the number of franchise outlets nationwide surpassing 30,000 for the first time, even as signs of market saturation intensify and growth prospects dim at home. According to the National Data Policy Agency’s 2024 Franchise Statistics released on December [...]