SEOUL, May 30 (Korea Bizwire) — The amount of electricity generated from renewable energy in South Korea touched an all-time high in 2021 on government efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, data showed Monday. Electricity produced from renewable energy sources came to 43,085 gigawatt hours last year, accounting for 7.5 percent of the country’s total [...]
SEOUL, May 29 (Korea Bizwire) — More than 170 employees from banks and other financial firms have embezzled more than a combined 100 billion won (US$79.62 million) over the past five years, but about a mere 11 percent has been retrieved, data showed Sunday. Calls have grown recently for financial firms and authorities to strengthen [...]
SEOUL, May 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Major card firm Hyundai Card Corp. said Friday its credit card users’ payments soared in April amid eased anti-virus restrictions. Hyundai Card said users spent a total of 8.69 trillion won (US$6.92 billion) for travel, flight, hotel and other reopening-related expenses last month, up 15 percent from a year [...]
SEOUL, May 26 (Korea Bizwire) — Employment of wage workers in South Korea grew at a slower clip in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared with three months earlier amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, data showed Thursday. The number of paid employee jobs came to 19.97 million in the fourth quarter, up 376,000, from a [...]
SEOUL, May 26 (Korea Bizwire) — More than 7 out of 10 listed companies in South Korea have suffered stock price setbacks over a one-year period as investors remain disheartened by rate hikes in major economies, data showed Thursday. According to the data from the Korea Exchange, 72.4 percent of the 2,498 firms traded on [...]
SEOUL, May 26 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of startups in South Korea dropped 3.4 percent in the first quarter of the year due largely to a one-off factor, government data showed Thursday. A total of 348,732 startup businesses were set up in the January-March period, compared with 360,846 a year earlier, according to the [...]
SEOUL, May 25 (Korea Bizwire) — South Koreans’ use of mobile banking and other online financial services increased in 2021 from two years earlier as customers preferred non-contact services amid the coronavirus pandemic, central bank data showed Wednesday. The Bank of Korea (BOK) said its 2021 survey of 3,536 Koreans aged 19 or older showed [...]
SEOUL, May 25 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s first-quarter fertility rate hit a fresh nadir and its population fell for 29 months running in March amid rising deaths, data showed Wednesday, pointing to the country’s gloomy demographic situation and chronically low birthrate. The country’s total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman [...]
SEOUL, May 25 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s consumption of gasoline and diesel sank more than 18 percent in April from a year earlier due to high international crude prices, data showed Wednesday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy consumed a combined 17.4 million barrels of gas and diesel last month, down 18.3 percent from a year earlier, [...]
SEOUL, May 23 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign bank branches in South Korea saw their combined net profit down 4.5 percent in 2021 due to a rise in securities-linked losses amid market downswings, data showed Monday. The combined net income of 35 foreign lenders’ local branches stood at 1.15 trillion won (US$904.4 million) in the fiscal [...]