The South Korean government said Wednesday that it will promote the "social economy" sector in a bid to expand its contribution to employment and build up a social safety net.The Presidential Committee on Job Creation held a meeting chaired by President Moon Jae-in and announced a plan to boost the country's social economy.The social economy is a third sector that creates social value through economic activities based on communities and voluntary institutions. They are mostly made up o

The Moon Jae-in government unveiled Wednesday its final version of a road map aimed at creating over 800,000 jobs in the public sector in the next five years as part of its efforts to tackle the country's rising unemployment amid slowing growth.  Under the plan, some 200,000 public sector temporary workers who are expected to work for the next two years or nine months a year, will be switched to full time by 2020, according to the Presidential Committee on Job Creation. Of those, 70,000 wil

The number of employed people in Korea reached 26.84 million in September, marking the largest monthly employment growth since May, according to data compiled by Statistics Korea on Wednesday. The government data showed that the unemployment rate hit 3.4 percent last month, down 0.2 percentage point from a year ago. The number of newly employed also marked an increase of 314,000 compared to September last year. Korea’s employment rate last month also saw a 0.3 percentage point increas

The Moon Jae-in administration will have to spend over 7.3 trillion won ($6.4 billion) in the 2018-2020 period to subsidize the raising of the country's minimum wage to 10,000 won ($8.8) per hour, a report said Wednesday.The Moon government said in July it will raise the minimum wage by 16.4 percent to 7,530 won per hour next year in the biggest wage hike in nearly two decades. Moon hopes the wage hike will narrow the income gap and boost private consumption to help revive the sagging econo

More than 46,000 under-age minors own an average of 112.74 million won ($99,549) in inherited assets, including 304 who are less than one year old, a report from the National Tax Service said Wednesday.The data, submitted to the National Assembly for parliamentary audits, covered the 2008-2016 period.The report showed 46,542 minors aged under 18 held 5.24 trillion won in handed-down wealth. Financial assets accounted for 2.81 trillion won, or 39.7 percent, while real estate amounted to 1.69 tril

The government collected 6.6 trillion won ($5.82 billion) in taxes last year by bringing the underground economy into the official economy, finance ministry data showed Wednesday.Records for 2013-2016 submitted to the National Assembly for parliamentary audits showed the government had gained a yearly average of 5.39 trillion won in additional taxes in comparison to 2012 through such a process. The sum in 2013 totaled 3.19 trillion won, which grew to 5.62 trillion won in 2014, 6.14 trillion won

The World Trade Organization announced Tuesday that its dispute settlement report regarding South Korea’s ban on fisheries imports near Japan’s Fukushima is expected to be released in January or February next year.  　Following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant explosion in March 2011, Korea imposed a ban on imports of agricultural and marine products near Fukushima. In 2013, the country extended its import ban and announced special measures to prohibit the importation of fisheri

The chief of the Financial Supervisory Service apologized Tuesday over the financial regulator's alleged irregularities in hiring employees with ties to influential figures, including politicians and bankers.The FSS has been under fire after state auditors found last month that a senior FSS official gave a special favor to some job candidates who are relatives of a then lawmaker and a top financial executive between late 2015 and early 2016. Choe Heung-sik, governor of the FSS, made the apology

According to data by the Bank of Korea and Statistics Korea, the economic growth rate has continued to decrease in the past decades throughout three different administrations, dropping significantly from around 5 percent of growth rate recorded in the 2000s. The Moon Jae-in administration has vowed to surpass the 3 percent growth rate, with experts advising strategic moves to enable new growth engines beyond the lagging competition in the auto and steel industries.

President Moon Jae-in reiterated the need to reduce the country's working hours Monday, noting that long hours not only reduce people's quality of life but also cause unnecessary accidents.The president's remarks came in a weekly meeting with his top aides at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae."We must no longer accept a society that thinks long work hours and overwork are natural. Among countries with an employment rate of more than 70 percent, no country has annual working hours of mor

South Korean manufacturing companies’ investments abroad have been increasing at a rapid pace in contrast to sluggish corporate activity at home.Overseas investments by local manufacturers in the first quarter of this year jumped 115.2 percent from a year earlier to $11.4 billion, according to recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.The increase rate exceeded 75 percent for Germany, 56.2 percent for Japan and 41.3 percent for the US, as well as the OECD a

Following Seoul and Washington’s decision to begin talks on possibly modifying certain aspects of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, US congressmen appeared unanimous that the US president should avoid making any drastic amendments that would jeopardize bilateral relations, though the trade deal has its flaws. 　According to the US House of Representatives on Monday, the House Ways and Means Committee launched a hearing on “Opportunities to expand US trade relationships in the Asia-Pa

South Korea's household lending by banks rose at the slowest pace in five months in September, but mortgage loans continued the upside trend amid the government's toughened financial measures to cool down the real estate market, central bank data showed Monday.Outstanding household loans from lenders came to 749.2 trillion won ($664.8 billion) as of the end of last month, according to the data by the Bank of Korea. This marks a 4.9-trillion won increase compared to the previous year, but the ris

South Korea's unemployment rate grew by the biggest margin in August among member states of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, due chiefly to youth joblessness, the latest data showed Monday.The figures released by the OECD put South Korea's unemployment rate for August at 3.8 percent, up 0.2 percentage point from the previous month. While it was the first increase since June, the rate of increase was the highest, along with Austria, among the 25 OECD members checked. Numb

South Korean workers' average wage rose less than 30 percent in the 2008-2015 period, while the amount of their withholding tax jumped 60 percent, tax records showed Monday.Statistics provided by the National Tax Service to Rep. Park Myung-jae for the ongoing parliamentary inspections said an average salaried worker earned 32.6 million won ($28,913) a year in 2015, up 28.9 percent from 2008. The withholding tax, on the other hand, rose 60 percent to 1.6 million won from 1 million won during the