Economy tidbits

As long as I've been following things in Korea, the talk has been that the rift between department stores frequented by the rich and smaller outlets of the "ordinary people" is getting bigger; this especially around '99, when Korea was still "under the IMF era". Hankyoreh tells that dept stores are extending their customer base still. Lotte Department Store had 38 000 customers who purchased for more than 10 million won [€ 6700]. Hankyoreh titled the piece "Dept Stores' Big Hands (k'ûn son) Increased"; "big hand" is a term usually referring to women who move around big amounts of money, and this is clearly what is meant here. (Update. Thanks to a comment, the sum above in € has been corrected to 6700.) Taxi fares will rise next year (Hankyoreh), as the fare for the number of passangers and the nighttime fare will change. "Morning Well", a mandu company now revealed to have used substandard materials for its products, has been awarded food safety prices for three consecutive years (Hankyoreh). Korea Management Association (한국능률협회) and its subsidiaries have been responsible for most of the awards. Addition. Joongang Ilbo tells of the recent food safety control campaign of the police. In 588 cases 633 persons have been apprehended, and of them three arrested. The rather expected criticism is that this kind of structural problems in food safety administration cannot be solved by temporary campaigns. The illustration linked from Joongang is about a poultry industry man who used industrial resin to remove duck feathers, and about a case in which Chinese chili powder was marked as Korean. [I think I've heard that kind of cases before...]