South Korea’s president fired her country’s health minister Tuesday. No reason was given, but he had been widely criticized for his response to the crisis of MERS—Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. MERS killed 36 people in South Korea, and also took a heavy economic toll. But not everywhere. HPR’s Bill Dorman explains in today’s Asia Minute.
It’s been about a week since South Korea’s government announced that the MERS crisis was over. The first case was reported eleven weeks ago…the last case about a month ago. In addition to killing three-dozen people and sickening nearly 200, the outbreak knocked the country’s quarterly economic growth to its slowest pace in more than six years.
But one area actually showed growth during the MERS crisis: on-line shopping. It makes sense when you think about it. While MERS was actually only spread in hospitals; a lot of fear kept people away from public places, including department stores.
Statistics Korea says that in June, at the height of the crisis, online retail sales rose by more than 26% compared to a year earlier. The rise was even bigger for people shopping with their smartphones, sales up 80%. That’s significant in South Korea, which has one of the highest smart phone penetration rates in the world.
According to the market research group EMarketer, 2/3 of South Koreans use smartphones. But internet sales are steadily growing around the region. The e-commerce publication “Internet Retailer” says the broader Asian market for online sales grew by 36-percent last year, more than twice as fast as North America or Europe.
