SEOUL, April 21 (Korea Bizwire) — Major South Korean firms’ labor costs rose nearly 13 percent in 2021 from a year earlier, but their hiring activities remained sluggish, a corporate tracker said Thursday. The combined labor cost of 120 companies, which are the top businesses in the country’s key 12 industrial sectors by revenue, amounted [...]
SEOUL, April 21 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean investors’ holdings of foreign securities reached a new all-time high in the first quarter of the year on an overseas investment boom, data showed Thursday. Local investors held overseas stocks and bonds worth a record US$101.68 billion as of end-March, up 1.08 percent from three months earlier, [...]
SEOUL, April 20 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s wheat import prices soared to an over 13-year high in March on the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a global supply chain bottleneck, data showed Wednesday, exerting upward pressure on food prices here. The country’s import prices of wheat amounted to US$402 per ton last [...]
SEOUL, April 20 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea placed second in research and development (R&D) spending as a portion of its gross domestic product (GDP) among major developed countries in 2020, but its tepid growth in recent years calls for more policy support, a report said Wednesday. South Korea’s R&D expenditures reached 93.1 trillion won [...]
SEOUL, April 19 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of employees in the food service segment rose 1.2 percent on-year in October last year as the job market improved amid the economic recovery, data showed Tuesday. The number of people employed at restaurants and eateries reached 1.56 million last October, up 19,000 from a year earlier, [...]
SEOUL, April 19 (Korea Bizwire) — More than half of South Korean people think women are not treated equally to men, a government survey showed Tuesday. According to the quinquennial government study, 53.4 percent of respondents said South Korea is not an equal society for women, down from 62.6 percent tallied in 2016. By gender, [...]
SEOUL, April 19 (Korea Bizwire) – Phishing scams involving instant messages in South Korea spiked in 2021 due to increased not-in-person activities amid the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Tuesday. The amount of damages from messenger phishing came to 99.1 billion won (US$80.3 million) last year, up 166 percent from the previous year, according to the [...]
SEOUL, April 18 (Korea Bizwire) – Car insurers in South Korea turned to a profit in 2021 for the first time in four years thanks to a pandemic-caused fall in loss rates and a rise in insurance premiums and subscribers, data showed Monday. According to the data by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), 12 car [...]
SEOUL, April 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s car exports fell 7.7 percent in March due mainly to the continued shortage of automotive chips and supply disruptions of car parts in China amid the COVID-19 pandemic, data showed Friday. Outbound shipments of automobiles stood at 179,630 units last month, compared with 194,562 units a year [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s total population has started to decline amid low childbirths, but the number of foreigners here is forecast to continue to increase to make up of 4.3 percent of the population in 2040, a report showed Thursday. After peaking at 51.84 million in 2020, the country’s total population [...]