2023-10-03 05:33:45
[시사저널e=박성수 기자] Korean household debt has grown rapidly, recording the highest level of increase in the world. It was found that the Korean economy is in debt as not only household debt, but also corporate debt and government debt are growing like a snowball.
As Korea’s debt ratio is rising steeply compared to other countries, the damage is expected to increase in the future in an era of high interest rates.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the 3rd, the ratio of private debt to Korea’s gross domestic product (GDP) last year was 281.7%. Compared to the private debt ratio of 238.9% in 2017, it is an increase of 42.8% points in 5 years.
This is the highest increase among the 26 countries in the world for which data is available.
In 2017, Korea’s private debt-to-GDP ratio was 11th overall, but as the ranking has increased every year, it rose to 2nd place last year.
The rise in private debt was largely due to household debt.
Last year, Korea’s household debt to GDP ratio was 108.1%, up 16.1 percentage points from 2017 (92%). This is the highest level among the 26 countries for which data is available, and Korea is the only country to record a double-digit increase.
Following Korea, Slovakia (9.1%p), Japan (7.7%p), Jordan (6.0%p), Luxembourg (3.9%p), Chile (2.8%p), Switzerland (2.5%p), and Germany (2.3%p) ) is in that order. The share of household debt decreased in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Austria, Denmark, Norway, and Portugal.
The household debt ratio ranking also jumped from 7th to 2nd overall.
The industry cited real estate as the reason for the increase in household debt ratio. During the COVID-19 period, real estate prices soared and the number of people buying houses with excessive loans increased, leading to a significant rise in household debt. In addition, the fact that the self-employed and small business owners, whose income decreased due to the domestic recession during the corona period, increased their livelihood loans is also believed to have had an impact.
Korea’s corporate debt-to-GDP ratio also increased by 26.6 percentage points from 147% in 2017 to 173.6% last year. This is second only to Luxembourg (38%p).
Government debt also grew at a rapid rate during this period.
In 2017, Korea’s government debt to GDP ratio was around 40.1%, but last year it increased by 14.2 percentage points to 54.3%.
The growth rate of total expenditures in our government’s budget rose from 3.7% in 2017 to 7.1% in 2018 and 9.5% in 2019. From 2020 to 2022, when COVID-19 was prevalent, expenditure growth rate was approximately 9% annually.
The size of deficit government bonds also nearly tripled in one year from 34.3 trillion won in 2019 to 102.8 trillion won in 2020, and recorded 88.2 trillion won and 86.2 trillion won in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
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