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SOUTH KOREA   RETAIL MARKET    South Korea retail sales grew 19 percent last year and voted as one of the world’ top 15 emerging retail market with its local hypermarket chains expanding fast. Britain’s Tesco has performed well in South Korea with the opening of eight new hypermarkets in the country, bringing its total to 62 stores last year. Tesco’s strategy was concentrated on the hypermarket good look image, with not so much focus on prices. They provide more branded-quality goods, attractive packaging and more-upscale approach which was more appealing to shoppers. Besides, their approach has been to find a local partner to joint venture with, at least initially, so that they can understand the market. That’s what they did in South Korea and Thailand, and what they’re doing in China.   Wal-Mart and Carrefour has decided to make an exit out of the country and decide to concentrate on more profitable core activities with larger populations in other countries such as India and China. The issue of low prices and none appealing stores obviously did not attract the consumers. South Korean clothing retailer E-land Group paid Carrefour $1.85 billion for its 32 stores. On the other hand, Wal-Mart sold its 16 South Korean outlets to Shinsegae, a local retailer, for $882 million.       KEY STATISTICS   Population: 48,846,823 (July 2006 est.)   Age structure: 0-14 years: 18.9% (male 4,844,083/female 4,368,139) 15-64 years: 71.9% (male 17,886,148/female 17,250,862) 65 years and over: 9.2% (male 1,818,677/female 2,678,914) (2006 est.)   Population growth rate: 0.42% (2006 est.)   GDP (purchasing power parity): $965.3 billion (2005 est.) GDP - per capita (PPP): $20,400 (2005 est.)   Unemployment rate: 3.7% (2005 est.)

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