SEOUL, Feb. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — The ruling Democratic Party is discussing ways to get lucrative companies to share some of their profits with small businesses vulnerable to losses amid the coronavirus pandemic. The IT industry, one of the beneficiaries of the pandemic era, is leading the charge. South Korea’s top mobile messenger operator Kakao [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — As more people are staying indoors following the coronavirus outbreak, projectors are gaining popularity as people spend longer hours streaming videos from Netflix and other popular media platforms. South Korea’s projector sales jumped 32 percent last year from a year earlier, according to Danawa, an online price comparison and [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Global streaming giant Netflix saw its subscriber numbers soar in South Korea last year due to changes in people’s media usage patterns caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a report said Monday. According to the report by market research firm Nielsen Korea, the monthly unique visitors to Netflix in South [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Lingering concerns over COVID-19 kept South Korean people from going to cinemas during the Lunar New Year holiday, but recently eased social distancing is expected to brighten prospects for the virus-hit film industry, box office data showed Monday. The number of moviegoers reached a total of 707,000 during the [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s online food market posted explosive growth in 2020 from a year earlier due to the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, data showed Monday. The value of online food transactions in Asia’s fourth-largest economy came to 43.4 trillion won (US$39.2 billion) last year, up 62.4 percent from a [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — More than half of South Koreans are in favor of raising taxes for high income earners to mitigate the polarization that has deepened during the pandemic, a poll showed Sunday. In the survey of 1,000 South Koreans aged 18 or older conducted last week, 57.4 percent of respondents agreed [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — Convenience stores outperformed major department stores for the first time in terms of offline sales last year amid the country’s yearlong social distancing scheme, data showed Sunday. The combined sales of the top three convenience store chains — GS25, CU and 7-Eleven — took up 31 percent of the [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, the number of public transport passengers dropped sharply in Seoul last year, dealing a heavy blow to the finances of the bus companies that are operated under the semi-public management system. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, 1.45 billion passengers used the city’s [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Perfume sales in South Korea have gone up despite the suspension of perfume testing at department stores. Last December, South Korean retailers suspended all practices of testing cosmetic samples at offline vendors in accordance with government regulations, which has led to a plunge in cosmetics sales at department stores. [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 9 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of burglaries in South Korea has dropped as more people are staying indoors due to the coronavirus pandemic. S-1 Corp., South Korea’s leading security solutions provider, analyzed customer data of 800,000 people, which showed that the number of burglaries last year dropped by 42 percent compared to [...]