Fewer Koreans are having meals with their families, according to government data. Less than 50 percent of 7,000 Koreans surveyed last year said they had breakfast with their family members. The number has been declining since 2005, from 62.9 percent to 53.7 percent in 2010, and to 46.1 percent last year. Meanwhile, only 64.1 percent of the surveyed Koreans said they had dinner with their famil...

Child abuse committed by workers at nursery-related institutes has recently been rampant, the state-run child rights organization said. According to the National Child Protection Agency, the number of such cases more than doubled from 260 in 2012 to 644 in 2013. It accounted for 9.5 percent of the 6,796 child abuse cases in 2013. Public anger erupted this month when a worker at a day care cente...

The recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has spread nationwide despite efforts by South Korea’s quarantine authorities to contain it, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. As of Thursday, 50 cases of the disease occurred in 13 cities and districts, mostly in the central region of the peninsula. North Chungcheong Province ― the epicenter of the outbreak ― was the ...

About 20 percent of young adults begin employment as contract workers with positions that last less than a year, an indication that the nation’s youth labor market is worsening, according to data released by the National Statistics Office. The government agency conducted an economic activity census and found that about 761,000, or 19.5 percent of young adult workers, began working under such con...

Seoul has some of the highest prices for goods such as Starbucks coffee, Chilean wine, carbonated water, beef and imported fruits, according to data released by Consumers Korea on Monday. The organization examined the prices of 42 agricultural, livestock and processed products in June and October across 13 major cities in the world. Out of 42 products, Seoul turned out to have the highest price...

Korea’s auto export volume dropped for the second consecutive year, but its value edged up 0.6 percent on-year to an all-time high of $48.9 billion last year, according to government data. The Trade Ministry said in a report that the number of exported cars amounted to 3,061,000 units, a 0.9 percent decrease from 2013, mainly due to moribund European markets and GM Chevrolet pulling out of Weste...

Broadband speed in Singapore is now the world’s fastest, according to a Federal Communications Commission report. In the third quarter of last year, Singapore recorded an average connection speed of 105.3 Mbps. Other Asian countries that topped the global list for fastest Internet speeds are Hong Kong (95.7 Mbps), Japan (69.7 Mbps) and South Korea (34 Mbps). Globally, the average connection sp...

The Korea Development Institute forecast that the decline in global oil prices would have a positive effect on the Korean economy. In its report analyzing the relevance of oil prices and its economic impact, the state-run think tank said that if oil prices hold at $49 per barrel, the Korean economic growth rate would increase by 0.2 percentage points. It also stated that if oil prices drop by 10 ...

Nearly one hundred days have passed since the controversial handset subsidy law took effect. The law, which prohibits telecom firms and handset makers from providing subsidies higher than 300,000 won to attract customers, has affected the pattern of subscription of mobile phones. Due to the subsidy limit that started on Oct. 1, the number of new subscribers sharply decreased in the first month....

The size of shadow banking in Korea doubled in five years, according to data released by the Swiss-based global monitoring body Financial Stability Board on Monday. The value of the shadow banking industry, which mainly refers to nonbank financial intermediaries that provide services similar to traditional banks under less strict regulatory oversight, reached about $1.47 trillion in 2013, or 113...

The founders of Korea’s major star management companies snagged the top four slots on the list of Korea’s stock-rich celebrities in 2014, an online business researcher’s data showed recently. As of Dec. 30, Yang Hyun-suk, the founder of YG Entertainment, topped the list with his listed stocks worth about 185.8 billion won ($168.2 million), according to Chaebol.com. Lee Soo-man, the founder of S...

More than 3,000 people earned financial investment income of 500 million won ($455,290) or more last year, according to the National Tax Service’s annual report. The individuals earned an average 2.4 billion won, and of this amount, 1.7 billion won or 71 percent comprised interest or dividend income, the data showed. The total amount of financial income reported to the tax office last year was ...