SEOUL, Aug. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Deposits at South Korea’s individual retirement pension (IRP) products rose more than 16 percent in the first half of the year to flirt with 30 trillion won, data showed Thursday. The cumulative amount of IRP funds came to 29.5 trillion won (US$24.9 billion) at the end of June, up [...]
SEJONG, Aug. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s total fertility rate hit a record low of 0.92 in 2019, government data showed Wednesday, in a clear warning to the nation’s economy over a population decline going forward. The total fertility rate refers to the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime. The [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — Sales of imported commercial vehicles in South Korea fell 25 percent last month from a year earlier amid the coronavirus pandemic, an industry association said Wednesday. The number of newly registered imported commercial vehicles fell to 289 units in July from 383 a year earlier, according to the Korea [...]
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 [...]