South Korea’s exports inched down 2 percent in the first 20 days of December from a year ago, data from the Korea Customs Service showed Monday.The drop was mainly due to decreased shipments of semiconductors and ships -- 16.7 percent and 51.2 percent, respectively.Exports of passenger cars and wireless equipment, on the other hand, increased by 2.7 percent and 3 percent, respectively.(khnews@heraldcorp.com)

Three years ago, Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election triggered a search for explanations of what is still a shocking outcome. One immediately came to dominate: His Democratic opponents had been insufficiently aware of the problem of income inequality, or had neglected to propose effective solutions.That is presumably the logic behind the radical proposals to tackle inequality coming from some of the leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidentia

Large-scale concerts held by Korean boy band BTS held in October has generated nearly 1 trillion won of economic impact, a study by Korea University Business School showed.The three concerts held at the Seoul Olympic Stadium appear to have created around 922.9 billion won of both direct and indirect economic effects, equivalent to the annual revenue generated by six typical medium-sized companies in Korea. Direct economic effect was calculated with ticket sales, costs for the venue and live broa

A few days ago, I chaired the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). What might seem to be a rather bureaucratic acronym, actually is a politically highly relevant event for our continents. I had offered to host this meeting in Madrid when I was still Foreign Minister of Spain and I chaired it as EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. It underlines my personal interest in the fast-moving continent that is Asia today. The meeting confirmed my conviction in a world of accelerati

On the most important issue in the United Kingdom’s modern history -- whether to leave the European Union or remain -- the UK’s electoral system produced an absurd result. A majority of the UK public wants to remain in the EU, and actually voted accordingly in the parliamentary election on Dec. 12. Yet the election produced a large majority for the Conservative Party, which backs a quick Brexit. The reason is as simple as it is troubling: the failure of the first-past-the-post electo

The number of working South Koreans who used their parental leave reached nearly 100,000 in 2018. Among them, the number of men taking child care leave surged nearly 47 percent on-year, data from Statistics Korea showed.Last year, the number of workers who used parental leave marked 99,199, up 10.1 percent from the previous year. Of them, 82.2 percent were females, a jump of 4.4 percent on-year. Only 17.8 percent of the male workers used their paternity leave, but the figure soared 46.7 percent,

As South Korea’s overheated real estate market continued to reel from the repercussions of the Moon Jae-in administration’s rigorous anti-real estate deal regulations announced earlier this week, a civic group released data showing that major businesses are responsible for the investment hype.According to the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice, land owned by five major conglomerates -- Hyundai Motor, Lotte, Samsung, SK and LG -- saw their property value surge 61 trillion

South Korean oil refinery S-Oil, which is wholly owned by Saudi Aramco, has donated 145 million won ($130,000) to help children in low-income families suffering from biliary obstruction, the firm said Wednesday.The fund has been gathered by some 1,800 company executives and employees donating less than 10,000 won each from their wage for several months, the company explained.Biliary obstruction occurs when one of the ducts that carry bile from liver to the intestine gets blocked. Without treatme

The ratio of home transactions worth over 900 million won ($7,700) in South Korea topped 4.4 percent in 2019. It is the first time the proportion has crossed the 4 percent mark, and is the highest level since 2006, according to data by property market information provider Zigbang on Wednesday.The data includes individual houses, multiplexes, townhouses and apartments. Residences priced over 900 million won and 1.4 billion won marked 2.7 percent, while those over 1.4 billion won came to 1.7 perce

The Korea Herald is publishing a regular contribution series written by senior investment strategists at Standard Chartered Group Wealth Management. -- Ed.We believe the three- to six-month outlook for global equities, credit and other income-generating assets looks favorable. This is based on our view that global growth prospects are stabilizing after a period of downgrades, event risks are declining and the US Federal Reserve has injected significant dollar liquidity into the global financial

The following article was contributed by the Embassy of Ukraine -- Ed.Startup has recently become a superfluous word, and is viewed as a driver of future-oriented innovative economy. But you have probably never heard about a startup country. This metaphor was used by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to describe ambitious and vibrant economy of Ukraine, which is in many ways different from other emerging markets.In the five years since the Revolution of Dignity, notwithstanding aggressive efforts of