SEOUL, Dec. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Major South Korean companies’ spending on research and development (R&D) rose nearly 2 percent in the first three quarters of the year despite weaker sales amid the coronavirus pandemic, a corporate tracker said Wednesday. R&D expenditures by 217 large companies in Asia’s fourth-largest economy totaled 40.2 trillion won (US$37 [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — Sales of South Korea’s transportation industry reached an all-time high in 2019 thanks to a surge in demand for home deliveries, government data showed Tuesday. The transportation sector’s top line stood at nearly 152 trillion won (US$140 billion) last year, up 3.5 percent from the previous year, according to [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — The portion of single-member households in South Korea surpassed 30 percent of the total for the first time in 2019, data showed Tuesday, amid a delay in marriage and rapidly aging population. One-person families accounted for 30.2 percent of the total last year, up 29.3 percent from the previous [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — The average annual labor income peaked at the age of 45 for South Korean workers in 2017, while those aged 59 began spending more than they earned, data showed Monday. People aged 45 saw their annual average labor income hit 33.54 million won (US$31,000) per person in 2017 during [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — More than one out of four instructors at private institutes lost their jobs during the course of the new coronavirus pandemic, predominantly without unemployment benefits, a survey showed Monday. In an online survey on the effect of COVID-19 on 500 instructors released by Gabjil 119, a workers’ advocacy group, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s imports of Japanese beer spiked in October from a year earlier due to stepped-up marketing activities amid a weaker local boycott of goods from the neighboring country, data showed Monday. Seoul brought in US$370,000 worth of Japanese beer in October, up a whopping 873.7 percent from the [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of working mothers with underage children fell by the most during the six-month period ending in April as the job market remained sluggish amid the new coronavirus outbreak, data showed Friday. The number of working mothers with children aged under 18 reached 2.67 million as of end-April, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign ownership of South Korean land rose 1.2 percent in the first half of 2020 from the end of 2019, the land ministry said Friday. Foreigners owned 251.6 square kilometers — slightly more than four times the size of Manhattan — at the end of June. It represents 0.25 [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of moviegoers nationwide fell more than 20 percent in November as the third wave of mass coronavirus infections swept across the country, data showed Thursday. A total of 3.6 million people went to theaters last month, down 22 percent from 4.63 million tallied in October, according to [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — Online shopping in South Korea grew 20 percent in October from a year earlier as the new coronavirus outbreak prompted people to buy goods via e-commerce platforms, data showed Thursday. The value of online transactions stood at 14.2 trillion won (US$12.9 billion) in October, compared with 11.9 trillion won [...]