South Korean tourists’ interest grew the most for Portugal and Hungary over the past year, although Japan, Vietnam and other nearby Asian nations remained steady picks, according to a travel fare website. Skyscanner analyzed internet searches of travel destinations from October last year to September this year and found that searches for Portugal increased 93 percent compared to the previous p...

A civil servant position is the most sought-after job among South Korean adults, though most of them aim to take jobs as office workers for practical reasons, a poll showed. Of 1,143 job seekers and salaried people questioned, the largest portion - 26.7 percent - said they wanted to work for the government or a public institution regardless of the reality, according to the survey conducted by ...

According to Ad Age’s list of the world’s 100 largest advertisers, Samsung pumped $11.2 billion into its advertising and sales promotion in 2017, up 13 percent from the previous year. Industry insiders say the increased spending was aimed at improving the company’s image after the highly publicized recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in 2016 due to battery explosions. It is the first time that Samsung...

South Korea is expected to import less coffee this year for the first time in six years, as demand for the beverage has been hit by sluggish economic growth, according to market watchers here. In the January-October period, total imports of coffee stood at 121,019 tons, down 1,031 tons from a year earlier. This is the first on-year decrease since 2012. Asia’s fourth-largest economy imported ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named atop the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world for 2018 for an eighth year in a row. Her streak since 2006 has been broken only by Michelle Obama in 2010. South Korea’s Hotel Shilla CEO Lee Boo-jin also ranked 86th on Forbes’ list. British Prime Minister Theresa May ranked as the second most powerful woman, followed by International Mon...

About 1 in 4 South Korean adults owns a pet, and they spend an average of around 100,000 won ($89.95) per month on their companion, a report by KB Financial Group showed. According to the report by the financial conglomerate, 25.1 percent of 1,700 South Koreans aged over 20 responded that they currently have at least one pet, with 39.2 percent saying they had one in the past. Dogs were found...

Scientists monitoring Earth’s climate and environment have delivered a cascade of grim news this year, adding a sense of urgency to UN talks starting next week in Poland on how best to draw down the greenhouse gases that drive global warming. The 2015 Paris Agreement calls on humanity to block the rise in Earth’s temperature at “well below” 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels, a...

South Korean babies born in 2017 are expected to live more than 82 years on average, government data showed. According to data compiled by Statistics Korea, the average life expectancy in 2017 was 82.7 years. In 1970, the average life expectancy of Koreans was 62.3 years. The life expectancy of women was 85.7 years while that of men was 79.7 years in 2017.

South Korea is making progress in reducing the gap between rich and poor through its policies on social spending, tax and labor rights, aid agency Oxfam said in a report. Oxfam and Development Finance International Group, a nonprofit research group, issued a survey ranking 157 countries in the three policy areas deemed critical to reducing inequality, based on data available as of the end of 2...

A United Nations report said global efforts to reduce the effects of climate change are way off track, with global carbon dioxide emissions rising again in 2017. China ranks top with annual carbon dioxide emissions at 12.3 million metric tons. US emissions remain a source of debate, as the second-largest global polluter recently withdrew from the Paris Agreement despite current figures sta...

Japan’s rich have the largest accumulation of wealth in the Asia-Pacific region at $7.7 trillion, but Chinese millionaires are catching up. The pool of wealth held by China’s high-net-worth individuals grew by more than 144 percent between 2010 and 2017, reaching $6.5 trillion, according to the latest Asia-Pacific Wealth Report by consulting firm Capgemini. The corresponding rate of growth in ...

Singapore was voted the best place in the world for expats to live and work for a fourth straight year, beating New Zealand, Germany and Canada, according to HSBC’s annual Expat Explorer. Australia ranked sixth, a notch lower than last year. Switzerland ranked eighth, considering the high cost of raising children and the difficulty of making friends. Over 27,000 expats in 159 countries respo...

More than half of the women murdered worldwide last year were killed by their partners or family members, making home “the most dangerous place for a woman,” a new UN study said. In statistics released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime calculated that out of a total of 87,000 female homicide cases worldwide in 2...

The number of marriages between South Korean nationals and foreign nationals inched up last year, ending six consecutive years of decline, government data showed. There were 21,917 international marriages last year, up 1 percent, or 208, from a year earlier, according to the data from Statistics Korea. Those marriages accounted for 8.3 percent of the country’s 264,455 marriages in the same yea...

Mobile payments at Korean convenience stores have more than doubled this year due to greater use of smartphones and the expansion of mobile payment services, a market player said. South Korea’s top convenience store chain CU said the number of “easy mobile payments” at its outlets soared 121.5 percent on-year in the first 10 months of the year. Convenience store chain operators in Asia’s fou...