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 [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — SK Group, a South Korean telecom-to-chemicals conglomerate, ranked first in first-half net profit, beating Samsung Group on equity gains from its affiliates, a local market data provider said Sunday. In the six months that ended in June, SK Group’s consolidated net profit jumped 32 percent to 6.19 trillion won [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s population on the government’s database of residents register rose slightly and became older in 2019 from a year before, data showed Saturday. The country reported a total increase of 23,902, or 0.05 percent, in population to 51.8 million, and its average age rose to 42.6 from 42.1, [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — One in four parents who took parental leave in the first half of the year were fathers, data showed Thursday, as more of them opted to stay home for child care as schools closed amid the new coronavirus outbreak. The number of men who went on parental leave in [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Homegrown summer blockbusters like the zombie apocalypse film “Peninsula” helped South Korean movies see their combined admissions jump nearly 70 percent in July from a month earlier, data showed Thursday. The number of moviegoers who watched South Korean films reached 4.69 million last month, up 68.4 percent from 2.78 [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s electronics industry shrank in 2019 for the first time in 10 years as domestic and overseas demand weakened on a U.S.-China trade war and other negatives, a report showed Thursday. The industry’s output came to 321.9 trillion won (US$272 billion) last year, down 12.5 percent from the [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — The daily turnover of South Korea’s gold market hit a record high in July amid a surge in trade in the precious metal, the local exchange said Wednesday. The market’s daily turnover averaged 13.1 billion won (US$11.1 million) in July, more than double the amount of 5.2 billion won [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea lost about 277,000 jobs in July, marking a decline in the number of the employed for a fifth consecutive month, as the new coronavirus pandemic strained business activities, data showed Wednesday. The country’s jobless rate rose by 0.1 percentage point on-year to 4 percent in July, with [...]