SEOUL, Nov. 27 (Korea Bizwire) - South Korea’s tour agents are forecast to post better earnings this year as a sharp rise in outbound travelers offset a fall in the number of foreign visitors in the wake of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in the country, according to market watchers Friday. The MERS outbreak [...]
SEJONG, Oct. 2 (Yonhap) - South Korea’s retail sales inched up in August from a year earlier as consumer confidence made a modest recovery amid the receding Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) scare, a government report showed Friday. Retail sales reached slightly over 29.39 trillion won (US$24.95 billion) in the cited month, up 0.3 percent from [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s retail and tourism industries are preparing a slew of promotional and cultural events to woo back Chinese travelers during a long-haul holiday season, pinning their hopes on making up for a summer slump in the wake of a viral respiratory illness, sources said Monday. Since the first [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of Chinese people visiting South Korea is returning to levels seen before the MERS outbreak in May, data showed Thursday. About 303,000 Chinese people traveled to South Korea in the first 14 days of this month, up 4.8 percent from the same period last year, according to the [...]
SEOUL, Sept.7 (Korea Bizwire) – Youkes (Chinese tourists) have chosen Korea as the kindest country they have visited. According to Hotels.com, an online hotel reservation site, 14 percent of Chinese tourists answered that Korea was the kindest country they have visited, with Thailand (9 percent) and Japan (7 percent) ranked next. The countries that Chinese [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 3 (Korea Bizwire) – When the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome swept Korea earlier this year, Samsung Medical Center was at the center of the epidemic, not as a healing center for the deadly disease, but as the source of the outbreak. Among the 186 patients who contracted MERS, almost half (91) were infected at the [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 21 (Korea Bizwire) — A South Korean man is showing suspected symptoms of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) following a recent trip to the United Arab Emirates, health authorities said Friday. The 38-year-old man was moved to a hospital in Dongducheon, just north of Seoul, earlier in the day, as he had showed possible [...]
SEOUL/SEJONG, Aug. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea plans to give tax refunds to foreigners who receive plastic surgery here as part of efforts to lure more tourists, whose numbers have plunged following the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak, the government said Thursday. The plan is outlined in the government’s 2015 tax code revision, [...]
SEJONG, Aug. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s retail sales edged down in June as the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) caused people to stay away from large retail outlets, a government report showed Monday. Retail sales reached little over 29.34 trillion won (US$25.15 billion) in June, down 0.6 percent from the 29.51 [...]
SEOUL/SEJONG, Jul. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — Prime Minster Hwang Kyo-ahn Tuesday declared a de facto end to the outbreak of MERS, which has claimed 36 lives in the country since May. The number of people diagnosed with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has remained flat at 186 for the past 23 days, with the release of [...]