SEOUL, Nov. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea has launched task forces under several ministries to beef up the monitoring of prices of key food and other major items and to implement necessary measures swiftly as part of efforts to bring inflation under control, officials said Monday. The establishment of the entities, led by vice [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Geopolitical risks stemming from the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas are feared to cause a flare-up in inflation and ripple effects for the South Korean financial market and the real economy, the finance minister said Thursday. Choo Kyung-ho made the assessment during a parliamentary audit [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea will be fully prepared for any scenarios related to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas to minimize its impact on inflation and the broader economy, a senior finance ministry official said Thursday. First Vice Finance Minister Kim Byoung-hwan made the remarks while presiding [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s consumer prices are expected to grow at a faster pace in the coming months after a monthslong downtrend due mainly to rising global oil prices, officials said Sunday. Consumer prices, a key gauge of inflation, are forecast to rise more than 3 percent from a year earlier, [...]
SEOUL, June 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s middle class experienced a heavier burden from the country’s steep inflation in 2022 compared with the lower- and upper-income brackets, data showed Friday. According to an experimental report released by Statistics Korea, the on-year rise in consumer prices for the middle class came to 5.2 percent in [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) —Homeplus, a large discount store in South Korea, has reported a 36% increase in sales of its own-brand “Homeplus Signature” products from January to March compared to the same period last year. The sales of private label products were particularly high in food categories such as refrigerated convenience foods, snacks, [...]
SEOUL, March 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Impacted by high interest rates, high inflation and a stagnant job market, South Korea’s consumption has been on a downward trend since the autumn of 2022. According to data from Statistics Korea, the nation’s seasonally adjusted retail sales index stood at 103.9 in January, down 5.03 percentage points compared [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s consumer prices grew at the fastest pace in more than two decades in 2022, government data showed Friday, as the country felt the pinch of soaring prices of raw materials and energy sources following the Russia-Ukraine war. Consumer prices rose 5.1 percent on-year in 2022, accelerating from [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea took advantage of post-pandemic recovery through early 2022, but this year was overall challenging for the export-dependent nation as it felt the pinch of inflation sparked by the Russia-Ukraine war resulting in monetary tightening moves and slowed exports. Earlier this year, the South Korean government painted a [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Self-employed café owners are struggling to deal with increases in the price of raw materials such as milk and coffee beans. The number of coffee shops that were closed in the first half of this year in Seoul stood at 1,239, according to data from the Seoul Metropolitan Government. [...]