SEOUL, Sept. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — With South Korea’s self-employed and small businesses going through extremely tough times due to the resurgence of COVID-19, nationwide efforts are underway to help them overcome the hardships. A 39-year-old woman surnamed Kim who runs a small donut shop in Seoul has suffered from sluggish sales since the recent [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 8 (Korea Bizwire) – The number of self-employed people in South Korea has fallen at a far faster pace in 2020 than last year in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, data showed Tuesday. Asia’s fourth-largest economy had 5.548 million self-employed people as of the end of July, down 127,000 from the same [...]
SEOUL, March 10 (Korea Bizwire) — While one in five office workers say they have had “experience in starting a business” in the past, many of them had to shut down fewer than two years later, a recent report showed. According to a survey conducted by job search portal JobKorea of 1,348 adult men and [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Debt incurred by households and self-employed businesses in South Korea is estimated to surpass 2,000 trillion won (US$1,713 billion) as of September last year, according to central bank data on Sunday. Outstanding household loans came to 1,481 trillion won at the end of last September, up 13.6 trillion won [...]
SEJONG, Dec. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Small business owners in South Korea reported an average operating profit of 34 million won (US$29,264) last year, a survey showed Friday. According to the survey of 2,470 small business owners, conducted by Statistics Korea, they also posted average sales of 235 million won last year. The survey did [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — The majority of self-employed business owners started their business based on a small amount of initial capital, and with only a short period of preparation. According to Statistics Korea, 70 percent of self-employed business owners starting a business in the last 12 months had initial capital of less than [...]
SEJONG, Nov. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of nonwage workers such as those self-employed in South Korea edged down 0.9 percent in 2019 from a year earlier amid a protracted economic slump, government data showed Tuesday. There were 6.79 million unsalaried workers as of August, down 62,000 from the same period in 2018, according [...]
SEOUL, Apr. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Loans and the loan default rate both rose for the self-employed last year, the regulator’s data showed Monday. The loans extended to the self-employed totaled 389.8 trillion won (US$342.83 billion) at the end of the third quarter last year, up 13.9 percent from the same period of the previous [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — Small business owners in South Korea may face a bumpy road again this year despite a series of government measures to support them, industry watchers said Wednesday. The year 2018 was one of the worst years for self-employed people in Asia’s fourth-largest economy as they were hit hard by [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — The South Korean economy has one of the highest portions of individuals running their own stores and shops, and they are getting pushed to the brink by a slumping economy and policy missteps, market watchers said Monday. Data from Statistics Korea put the number of self-employed people at some [...]