SEOUL, South Korea — In the past month, Kim Yon-hwa, a sales clerk in Myeongdong, a popular shopping district in Seoul, has witnessed a drastic change reflecting the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome: The street outside her cosmetics shop, once teeming with foreign tourists, is nearly empty.
“You can’t see any foreigners outside, can you?” she said, glancing at the street. “The situation is not just serious; as far as we are concerned, it’s a crisis.”
Since the first case of the infectious disease, known as MERS, was discovered in South Korea on May 20, the outbreak has scared away enough tourists and domestic consumers for the government to worry about its effect on the economy.
Although health officials said the outbreak was subsiding, government policy makers who fear a much longer effect said on Monday that they were considering a spending increase to help stimulate the economy.
In the past few days, two state- financed research organizations forecast that the economic growth rate in 2015 would slow to a range of 2.8 percent to 2.9 percent, down from 3.3 percent last year. They cited the MERS outbreak as a burden on the economy, which had already shown more serious signs of slowing down, like weak domestic demand and declining ................................................
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