{"id":56839,"date":"2026-06-18T08:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T08:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/56839\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T08:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T08:29:13","slug":"korean-bank-loan-delinquency-rate-hits-10-year-high-in-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/56839\/","title":{"rendered":"Korean Bank Loan Delinquency Rate Hits 10-Year High in April"},"content":{"rendered":"

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South Korea’s bank loan delinquency rate hit its highest level in 10 years in April, as the “three highs” of high prices, high exchange rates, and high interest rates emerged amid the Middle East crisis. With the Bank of Korea (BOK) expected to raise its base rate as early as next month, analysts say measures such as managing vulnerable companies are needed.<\/p>\n

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said Wednesday that the won-denominated loan delinquency rate at domestic banks (principal and interest overdue for one month or more) stood at 0.61% at the end of April, up 0.04 percentage point over the year. On a same-month basis, it was the highest level since April 2016 (0.64%). It also rose 0.05 percentage point from March this year (0.56%). The banking sector cleared 1.6 trillion won in delinquent loans, but 2.9 trillion won in new delinquencies arose.<\/p>\n

The corporate loan delinquency rate was 0.74%, up 0.06 percentage point from the same month a year earlier. The delinquency rate for large corporate loans was 0.22%, up 0.09 percentage point from a year ago. The delinquency rate for small and mid-sized enterprise loans rose 0.07 percentage point over the year to 0.90%. In particular, the delinquency rate for small and mid-sized corporations rose 0.09 percentage point from the same month a year earlier to 0.98%, approaching the 1% range.<\/p>\n

The household loan delinquency rate also turned upward after a month. At the end of April, the household loan delinquency rate was 0.42%, up 0.02 percentage point from the previous month. The mortgage loan delinquency rate edged up only 0.01 percentage point from the previous month to 0.30%, but the delinquency rate for other loans, including credit loans, rose 0.07 percentage point to 0.83%.<\/p>\n

In the financial sector, observers say the delinquency rate could rise further if the base rate is raised. Financial authorities plan to strengthen monitoring of new delinquency trends as internal and external economic uncertainties, such as rising market interest rates, persist. “We will encourage banks to preemptively expand their loss-absorbing capacity by setting aside loan loss provisions,” an FSS official said. “We will also pursue our own debt restructuring for vulnerable borrowers at risk of delinquency.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea’s bank loan delinquency rate hit its highest level in 10 years in April, as the “three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[456],"tags":[845,12729,846,13874,1154,14372,32044,32045],"class_list":["post-56839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bank-of-korea","tag-bank-of-korea","tag-base-rate","tag-bok","tag-corporate-loans","tag-financial-supervisory-service","tag-household-debt","tag-korea-bank-loan-delinquency-rate","tag-sme-loans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}