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Hankyoreh provides a Yonhap article on the latest trends in incomes, consumption and increasingly widening income gaps. (What's missing is the source for the figures, but I'd guess the Korean National Statistics Office has released some statistics.) What is noteworthy is that business income (saôp sodûk) has decreased by 0.5% from one year ago, showing that the already difficult predicament of the self-employed has only gone from bad to worse. An adjoining article, this time giving the source as the recent publication of household economy statistics by the National Statistics Office, tells that the income difference between the highest fifth and the lowest fifth is biggest in five years, 5.9 million W per household vs. 1.15 million won. Someone at the Ministry of Finance gives the explanation that so much of the consumption of the high-income stratum is directed overseas that the "trickle-down effect" (트리클다운 효과) doesn't work - it doesn't help the domestic economy and the creation of new jobs. Might not for example the ever-increasing proportion of non-permanent employment, with poor pay and governmental blessing, have a lot to do with this? How come the people in the present ROK government are such bad lefties. Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: stratification ∙ money ∙ Koreansociety ∙ consumption