SEOUL, Jan. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean shipbuilders received the largest orders in eight years in 2021, and the country ranked the world’s No. 1 in terms of the construction of high value-added vessels, the industry ministry said Thursday. Local shipbuilders won new orders totaling 17.44 million compensated gross tons (CGTs) last year, more [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s exports of farm and fishery products surged more than 15 percent on-year to touch a new record high in 2021, government data showed Wednesday. Outbound shipments of agricultural, livestock and fisheries goods came to U$11.36 billion last year, up 15.1 percent from a year earlier, according to [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s wine imports soared over 70 percent in 2021 as more people enjoyed drinking at home and alone amid the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Wednesday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy imported US$506.2 million worth of wine in the January-November period of last year, up 76 percent from a year earlier, [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Nine out of 10 South Koreans feel climate change firsthand and are willing to accept any inconvenience caused by policies to solve the problem, a poll showed Tuesday. According to the poll of 1,000 adults nationwide by a civic group, 89.2 percent answered that they actually feel the effects [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Online shopping in South Korea hit a fresh record high in November, data showed Tuesday, in the latest sign that a growing number of people are using computers and mobile devices to buy things, ranging from clothes to electronic goods amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. The value of online [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign direct investment pledged to South Korea’s free economic zones (FEZs) surged 42.8 percent in 2021, led by the overseas investment in bio and other new industry sectors, data showed Tuesday. The country’s nine FEZs received US$1.31 billion worth of FDI commitment last year, up from $910 million a [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of foreign tourists who visited South Korea last year is expected to have fallen below the 1 million mark due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. The data from the state-run Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) showed 877,000 foreigners visited the country from January to November, down 64.3 percent [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — The local performing arts scene saw its revenue soar nearly 80 percent in 2021 from a year earlier, thanks to eased social distancing rules and a rising vaccination rate, data showed Monday. The combined revenue of 12,000 theatrical plays, musicals, classical concerts and other performances reached 307.1 billion won [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of smartphone users on 5G mobile networks had topped 20 million as of November for the first time since the service was commercialized in 2019, data showed Monday. The total number of 5G users reached 20.19 million in November last year, accounting for around 28 percent of [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 31 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean artists released an average 3.8 artistic works to the public in 2021, a sharp drop from 7.8 pieces in 2018, attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, a government survey showed Friday. According to the culture ministry’s triennial survey on 5,000 art industry people, the classical music scene was [...]