Almost half of call center workers have thought about taking their own lives due to poor labor conditions and extreme emotional labor, a state human rights watchdog survey showed. In the survey of 1,996 call center people conducted by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea from August to October, 48 percent said they thought of killing themselves and 30 percent said they had the thought...

Nearly 7 in 10 foreign buyers think that South Korea’s national brand is having a positive impact on their purchases of products from Asia‘s fourth-largest economy, a poll showed. According to the survey of 213 foreign buyers, 72.9 percent of the respondents replied that their imports of South Korean goods have been affected positively by the country’s national brand. Slightly over 25.4 perc...

The popularity of professional baseball in South Korea is in decline, especially among people in their 20s, the exact demographic that teams are trying to attract, a national poll showed. Gallup Korea released results of its survey of 1,004 South Koreans aged 18 or older from March 15-17. And only 31 percent of the polled said they had at least some interest in the Korea Baseball Organizatio...

South Korea’s imports of coffee surged more than 24 percent to hit a new all-time high in 2021 on its growing popularity here, data showed. The value of the country's coffee imports stood at $916.5 million last year, up 24.2 percent from the previous year, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service and industry sources. It marks the first time that South Korea’s coffee imports have...

More than half of South Koreans are against President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s plan to move the presidential office out of Cheong Wa Dae, while some 44 percent support the idea, a poll showed Wednesday. According to the poll of 500 adults, conducted by pollster Realmeter on Tuesday, 53.7 percent said the presidential office should remain at Cheong Wa Dae, and 44.6 percent said they back the reloc...

South Korea’s import prices of grain has jumped nearly 50 percent over the past two years to a near nine-year high amid the prolonged coronavirus pandemic, data showed. Prices of imported grains came to $386 per ton in February, up 26 percent from a year earlier and 47.4 percent from two years earlier, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service and industry sources. The February pe...

Instant noodles captured the top spot in production among food products in South Korea in 2020 on a surge in exports amid the coronavirus pandemic, data showed. The output of instant noodles, or “ramyeon” in Korean, stood at 1.93 million metric tons in 2020, up a whopping 231 percent from a year earlier, according to the data from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Ramyeon’s ranking in te...

The average monthly salary of wage earners rose 3.6 percent on-year in 2020 from a year earlier despite the COVID-19 pandemic, a government report showed. South Korean wage workers earned a monthly average of 3.2 million won ($2,669) in December 2020, up from 3.09 million won a year earlier, according to the report from Statistics Korea. The figure for workers with large companies stood at 5.29...

The proportion of US adults identifying as LGBT has increased to a high of 7.1 percent, double the figure from 2012 when Gallup first started measuring it, reflecting a generational shift, the polling firm said. Gallup asks Americans whether they personally identified as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual, as part of the demographic information it ...

The proportion of apartments bought by people in their 30s or younger reached an all-time high last year amid “panic buying” over soaring housing prices, data showed. The buyers in this age group accounted for 31 percent of the country’s total apartment sales in 2021, up from 29.2 percent in 2020, according to the data compiled by the Korea Real Estate Board. The agency began compiling the rela...

The local performing arts scene saw its revenue soar nearly 80 percent in 2021 from a year earlier, thanks to eased social distancing rules and a rising vaccination rate, data showed. The combined revenue of 12,000 theatrical plays, musicals, classical concerts and other performances reached 307.1 billion won ($258.1 million) last year, according to the data by the Korea Performing Arts Box Offi...

China's birth rate plummeted to a record low last year, official data showed, as analysts warn that faster-than-expected aging could deepen economic growth concerns. Beijing has been grappling with a looming demographic crisis as it faces a rapidly aging workforce, slowing economy and the country's weakest population growth in decades. The birth rate of the world’s second-biggest economy slippe...

Americans read an average of 12.6 books during the past year, according to a new Gallup poll released. That represents the lowest number of books read compared to any previous survey dating back to 1990, Gallup said. In three polls conducted between 2002 and 2016, Gallup surveys showed that Americans read an average of 15.2 books per year. The results are based on a Dec. 1-16 poll of a random s...

The percentage of Americans who identify as Christian dropped 15 percentage points over the past 14 years, while those who consider themselves religiously unaffiliated increased by 14 percentage points, a Pew study released indicates. Pew's National Public Opinion Reference Survey found that the majority of Americans - 63 percent - consider themselves Christian, down from 78 percent in 2007. Mea...