South Korea’s service sector logged a 5.6-percent rise in sales last year from a year earlier, thanks to robust sales at convenience stores and coffee shops, data showed Dec. 24.

The combined sales of local service firms totaled 2,155 trillion won ($1.85 trillion) last year, compared with 2,042 trillion won in 2017, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.

The data showed that 12.18 million people worked in the service sector in 2018, up 4 percent from a year ago.

According to the data, there were a total of 2.92 million companies in the sector last year, up 2.1 percent from a year earlier.

The increase was mostly driven by more businesses being launched in the retail, wholesale, lodging and restaurant areas.

Facility management, health and social welfare-related companies led the overall job creation with an 11.2 percent and 8.3 percent hikes in employment, respectively.

Profitability also rose slightly last year. The data showed that average sales posted by companies came to 738 million won last year, up 3.4 percent from a year earlier.

By Ram Garikipati and newswires (ram@heraldcorp.com)