Public firms' hirings rise 15% through Sept.

The number of people newly employed by South Korea's state-run corporations rose 15 percent this year from a year earlier amid a slump in the local job market, government data showed Monday.

Some 320 state-funded companies and organizations hired 14,790 new employees through September this year, up from 12,877 a year ago, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.


A total of 296,000 are working at the institutions, up 3.2 percent, or 9,224, from a year earlier, with four companies, including the Korea Railroad Corp. and the Korea Electric Power Corp., hiring more than 10,000 employees.

The data also showed that their debt ratio reached 190 percent as of end-June, slightly improving from 194 percent tallied at the end of December last year.

Their total debt totaled 366 trillion won ($319 billion), up 1 trillion won from six months earlier, while their total assets rose 4.8 trillion won to 193 trillion won. (Yonhap)