SEOUL, July 21 (Korea Bizwire) — It’s time to get ready for the summer holiday season, but shops in Myeongdong, a major shopping district in downtown Seoul, remain eerily quiet with “For Lease” signs attached to many storefronts along the main road. Long gone are the days when clerks at cosmetic shops promoted new products [...]
SEJONG, July 19 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of discouraged workers in South Korea hit a new monthly high in June amid the prolonged coronavirus pandemic, government data showed Monday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy had 583,000 discouraged workers, up 46,000 from a year earlier, according to the data from Statistics Korea. It was the largest tally [...]
SEOUL, July 16 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea plans to offer face masks and COVID-19 diagnostic kits to its citizens in Myanmar next week, the foreign ministry said Friday, amid a spike in new virus cases in the Southeast Asian country. The move followed reports that three South Korean citizens in Myanmar died recently after [...]
SEOUL, July 16 (Korea Bizwire) — The coronavirus pandemic is prompting consumers to stick to restaurants they’re used to frequenting, rather than looking for new places to eat. Local fintech firm Korea Credit Data studied credit card data collected from 700,000 vendors across the country to find that the use of credit cards at newly [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of South Korean and foreign migrants declined at the sharpest-ever pace last year as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted people’s cross-border movements, data showed Thursday. The number of international migrants, referring to those who stay for more than 90 days here, declined 15.9 percent from a year earlier, [...]
SEOUL, June 27 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of domestic trips taken by South Koreans dropped sharply last year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, a research institute said Sunday. South Koreans are estimated to have taken 225.19 million domestic trips in 2020, down 34.7 percent from a year earlier, the Korea Culture & Tourism [...]
SEOUL, June 22 (Korea Bizwire) — About a fifth of women with children up to sixth grade left their jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a poll showed Tuesday. The Korean Women’s Development Institute, a state-run think tank, said it conducted a survey on 722 such women from November to December and found that 21.3 percent [...]
SEOUL, June 22 (Korea Bizwire) — As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage on, smartphone apps that assist in child rearing are gaining popularity. The usage rate of Brush Monster, an augmented reality (AR)-based app for children developed by Kitten Planet to teach them how to brush their teeth, has quadrupled since the onset of [...]
SEOUL, June 22 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of double-income households in South Korea declined the most in three years last year as the job market took a beating from the pandemic, data showed Tuesday. The number of double-income households came to 5.59 million as of October last year, down 69,000 from the previous year, [...]
SEOUL, June 21 (Korea Bizwire) — Nearly 8 out of 10 South Korean consumers have increased their online shopping during the coronavirus pandemic, a poll showed Monday. The survey of 1,000 local consumers, taken by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, showed 78.4 percent of the respondents saying their online purchases have risen since [...]