SEJONG, Feb. 6 (Korea Bizwire) – Student loans from the government rose nearly three-fold from 2010 to 2014 due to tuition increases, a private research institute said Friday. Outstanding government-funded student loans came to 10.7 trillion won (US$9.8 billion) as of the end of last year, 2.9 times higher than 3.7 trillion won in 2010, [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves slipped in January from a month earlier as the currency value of the euro and the British pound weakened, data showed Wednesday. The country’s foreign exchange reserves reached US$362.2 billion as of the end of last month, falling $1.4 billion from December, according to Bank [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Sales of Volkswagen Group’s Golf hatchback outstripped that of Hyundai Motor Co.’s i30 compact last year, data showed Wednesday, the first time that a foreign brand has done better than a local automaker in a particular segment. Volkswagen sold 7,238 units of the Golf in South Korea for the [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Korea Bizwire) – Koreans are on an exodus to the land of MVNO discount phone services, fleeing from mobile network operators such as SKT and KT. According to a report from the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association (KTOA) on February 2, the number of added net subscribers of MVNOs reached 64,500 in January alone, [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s top tech giant Samsung Electronics Co., was relegated to No. 3 in smartphone market share in China in the fourth quarter of 2014, outperformed by U.S. rival Apple Inc., and is being threatened by its Chinese peers who are catching up fast, market data showed Monday. Samsung [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea posted a trade surplus with Japan in the auto parts sector for the first time last year as Japanese carmakers widened sources of imports to lessen risks, industry data showed Monday. According to the data provided by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and the Korea International [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 1 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign cigarettes outsold South Korean brands for the first time in 29 years last month, as a spike in prices affected local market demands, data showed Sunday. Market data collected from the country’s two main convenience store chains for January showed foreign cigarettes, which did better at lowering prices [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 31 (Korea Bizwire) – Koreans’ consumption rate of news coverage through public TV networks in 2014 dropped to 84.7 percent from 93.8 percent in 2013, according to a survey of 5,061 Koreans over 19 about Korea’s media consumption in 2014 that was published by the Korea Press Foundation on January 30. The rate [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 31 (Korea Bizwire) – Twelve major Korean asset management firms increased foreign stock transactions via their overseas investment funds by 63.9 percent from 2013 to 2014. The number of said transactions reached 79,687 in 2014, according to an announcement from the Korea Securities Depository (KSD) on January 30. The stock trades within their [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Six out of ten Korean businesses expected that currently low oil prices would produce positive effects, such as reduced production costs and sales increases. By industry, the automobile and textile industries showed high expectations, but the shipbuilding, E&C and petrochemical sectors expected losses to result from the low price of oil. [...]