SEOUL, Oct. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) employ 88 percent of the country’s workforce, but their labor productivity stops at a third of that of large companies, a working paper from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Thursday. Titled “Enhancing dynamism in SMEs and entrepreneurship in [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s business community on Tuesday expressed concern about additional costs stemming from a looming reduction in a weekly working hours. The move came after the National Assembly’s environment and labor committee passed a bill aimed at shortening maximum statutory working hours to 52 hours a week from the [...]
SEJONG, Nov. 2 (Korea Bizwire) – A new report by a government-backed policy institute has claimed that the introduction of the 40-hour work week has led to a 1.5 percent rise in productivity. The report, published by researchers Park Yun-soo and Park Woo-ram at the Korea Development Institute on Wednesday, showed fewer working hours are linked [...]
SEOUL, April 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Recent data from the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (Kotra) reveals that 82 percent of local manufacturers are prioritizing seeking cheaper labor outside of the country, ultimately undermining their productivity. Based on the business performance of 1,474 South Korean manufacturers with overseas plants, 12.6 percent fell within Kotra’s “high-cost, high-productivity” [...]
SEOUL, March 31 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s recent attempt to shorten what are some of the longest working hours in the world was thwarted after branches of government dealing with workers’ rights failed to come to an agreement. The disappointing outcome to postpone the much anticipated decision until after the presidential election in May follows [...]
SEOUL, Korea, April 30, 2014 (Korea Bizwire) – A study shows that “wageless growth,” which is an economic phenomenon in which real wage goes down while labor productivity is increased, was most prominent in Korea among major developed economies. According to a research report published by the Korea Institute of Finance “International Comparison on Wageless [...]