By Randall S. Jones The steep upward trend in housing prices has become a key social and economic issue in Korea. The failure of government policies to stabilize housing prices is blamed for a sharp fall in President Moon’s approval rating from 71% in early May, when he received credit for effective policies to stop…
September 14, 2020
By Randall S. Jones Following a 5.0 percent decline in the first quarter of 2020, real GDP fell 12.7 percent at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate (saar) in the second quarter (table below), the largest decrease since the Asian financial crisis more than two decades ago. Despite Korea’s success in limiting the spread of the coronavirus…
July 28, 2020
By Randall S. Jones Covid-19 has had a profound economic and social impact in a number of areas, such as education and travel. Healthcare has also been affected, including a massive spike in the use of telemedicine, which was already used in a large majority of OECD countries, including Japan, as well as in China.…
July 13, 2020
By Randall S. Jones The Moon administration’s fiscal policy was expansionary even before the coronavirus pandemic. With government spending increasing more than 9% in both 2019 and 2020, the OECD projected last year that Korea’s budget surplus, which was nearly 3% of GDP in 2018 (on a general government basis), would disappear in 2020. The…