SEOUL, Feb. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean firms are stepping up to allow employees to read more books by offering subsidies for buying books or opening up company libraries. Kyung Kye-hyun, CEO of Samsung Electronics Co.’s device solutions division, began offering coupons to thousands of management employees that give unlimited access to e-books. Kyung, himself [...]
SEJONG, Dec. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of businesses in South Korea rose nearly 18 percent over the past five years as almost all industrial sectors posted gains, data showed Tuesday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy had a total of 6,013,000 businesses as of the end of 2020, up 17.8 percent from five years earlier, according [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Furniture and home appliances makers, for which consumers have struggled to decide if size and color match well until such items are placed in actual spaces, are vying to bring offline retail experiences online. Shinsegae Casa, a furniture brand of Shinsegae Department Store, unveiled an augmented reality (AR) service [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — A majority of South Korean businesses in China are struggling with a rapidly deteriorating environment for local investment as well as regulatory discrimination compared to Chinese competitors, a major Korean business lobby group said Wednesday. The Federation of Korean Industries conducted a survey of 131 businesses (excluding financial firms) [...]
SEJONG, Dec. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean firms’ earnings plunged to a six-year low in 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Thursday. The combined pretax net profit of 13,429 companies came to 97.7 trillion won (US$82 billion) in 2020, down 3.9 percent from the prior year and marking the [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly half of South Korea’s large companies have yet to come up with their investment plans for next year due mainly to high economic uncertainty, a poll showed Monday. The survey of 101 big firms out of the country’s top 500 companies showed 49.5 percent having no investment plans [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — President Moon Jae-in on Friday encouraged private firms to go carbon neutral, pledging the government will provide financial and regulatory support for their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Moon made the remarks at a meeting on carbon neutrality with chief executives of some 40 big and medium-sized companies, [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — Businesses with Consumer-centered Management (CCM) certification tend to show better performance in environmental, social and governance (ESG) management, a consumer watchdog said Tuesday. The Korea Consumer Agency analyzed the annual CCM Certification Data from 2012 to 2020 and the ESG Performance Data compiled by the Korea Corporate Governance Service [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Employers have resorted to hiring irregular workers to minimize uncertainty in the pandemic era, a study showed Monday. The Korea Labour and Society Institute analyzed data provided by Statistics Korea to show that the number of wage workers reached 20.99 million people in August of this year, up by [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Large South Korean companies’ social contributions plunged nearly 37 percent in the first nine months of the year amid the coronavirus pandemic, a corporate tracker said Wednesday. CEO Score, which tracks corporate management, said 255 out of the country’s top 500 firms by sales donated a combined 1.01 trillion [...]