This guide describes exactly what FXMacroData serves today for the South Korean won. The production catalogue for KRW is deliberately focused: seven series from the Bank of Korea and the Korea Real Estate Board, covering GDP, short-term and 2-year rates, household credit, house prices and the two flagship sentiment surveys. The guide explains each one, when it is released in Seoul time and UTC, and how USD/KRW traders can use it.
Quick answer
What is covered
7 KRW series: quarterly real GDP, the 2-year Korea Treasury Bond yield, KOFR (the Korea Overnight Financing Repo Rate), household credit outstanding, the house purchase price index, the Business Survey Index and the Composite Consumer Sentiment Index.
Who publishes it
The Bank of Korea for six series, sourced through its ECOS statistics system, and the Korea Real Estate Board for house prices.
Why it matters
KRW is a high-beta Asian currency tied to the global trade and semiconductor cycle. Growth, household leverage and sentiment show how much room the Bank of Korea has to move.
Takeaway: The KRW catalogue is a growth, credit and sentiment set. It does not currently include a KRW policy-rate or CPI series, so pair it with the Bank of Korea's own announcements for the policy side.
Who Publishes Korean Data
The Bank of Korea (BOK) is both the central bank and one of the country's main statistical agencies. Besides setting the Base Rate, it compiles the national accounts (GDP), the household credit statistics, the Business Survey Index and the Consumer Sentiment Index, and publishes money-market and bond-market rates. FXMacroData sources these series from the BOK, through its ECOS statistics service.
The Korea Real Estate Board (REB) publishes the national house purchase price index, the official measure of Korean housing prices.
Each row in FXMacroData records the reference period (date) and, where the publisher gives one, the publication moment (announcement_datetime). The monthly KOFR and 2-year bond series are compiled by the BOK after month end, so they carry a reference date but no intraday release timestamp. New releases are typically available within seconds of official publication (release speed).
KRW Indicators Covered
Rates
- KOFR: the Korea Overnight Financing Repo Rate, Korea's overnight risk-free reference rate, served as a monthly series. It tracks the BOK Base Rate closely and is the benchmark for KRW interest-rate swaps.
- 2-year Korea Treasury Bond yield: monthly. The 2-year reflects market expectations for the Base Rate over the next two years, and its spread to the US 2-year is a common USD/KRW input.
Growth
- Real GDP: quarterly, seasonally adjusted, in KRW billions at chained 2020 prices. The BOK's advance estimate arrives within about four weeks of quarter end, early by international standards, which makes it an early read on Asian export demand.
Credit and housing
- Household credit outstanding: the BOK's quarterly measure of household debt, including loans and credit-card purchases. Korea's household debt is high relative to GDP, and the BOK has repeatedly cited it as a constraint on cutting rates.
- House purchase price index: the REB's monthly national housing price index. Housing prices, especially in Seoul, feed directly into financial-stability concerns and therefore the policy debate.
Sentiment
- Business Survey Index (BSI): the BOK's monthly survey of corporate conditions. The catalogue normalises the series to a 0 to 100 scale for comparison across countries.
- Composite Consumer Sentiment Index (CCSI): the BOK's monthly household sentiment survey, also normalised to 0 to 100 in the catalogue. Because it is surveyed and published within the same month, it is one of the earliest official reads on current conditions.
KRW Release Timing
Korea uses Korea Standard Time (Asia/Seoul, UTC+9) all year, with no daylight saving. The BOK releases its sentiment surveys at 06:00 Seoul time, which is 21:00 UTC on the previous day, so they are often available before the Asian trading day opens.
| Release | Publisher | Frequency | Local time (Asia/Seoul) | UTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Composite Consumer Sentiment Index | Bank of Korea | Monthly, late in the month | 06:00 | 21:00, previous day |
| Business Survey Index | Bank of Korea | Monthly, end of month | 06:00 | 21:00, previous day |
| Real GDP (advance and preliminary) | Bank of Korea | Quarterly | 08:00 | 23:00, previous day |
| Household credit | Bank of Korea | Quarterly | 12:00 | 03:00 |
| House purchase price index | Korea Real Estate Board | Monthly, mid-month | Release day (date only) | Release day |
| KOFR and 2-year KTB (monthly) | Bank of Korea | Monthly | After month end | After month end |
Upcoming KRW release dates are on the release calendar.
Worked Example: Q2 2026 GDP
The Bank of Korea's estimate for the second quarter of 2026 put real GDP at KRW 600,474.9 billion, up from 596,692.8 billion in the first quarter. That is growth of 0.63 per cent on the quarter and 3.76 per cent on the year. The request:
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" "https://api.fxmacrodata.com/v1/announcements/krw/gdp?start_date=2026-06-01"The latest row returned (abridged to the fields used here):
{
"currency": "KRW",
"indicator": "gdp",
"data": [
{
"date": "2026-06-30",
"val": 600474.9,
"previous_value": 596692.8,
"previous_date": "2026-03-31",
"announcement_datetime": 1784761200,
"announcement_datetime_local": "2026-07-23T08:00:00+09:00"
}
]
}The epoch 1784761200 is 23:00 UTC on 22 July 2026, which is 08:00 local time (Asia/Seoul) on 23 July 2026.
The release landed at 08:00 Seoul time on 23 July, which is still 22 July in UTC terms. The full API response also carries pct_change_qoq and pct_change_yoy fields, so a script does not need to compute the growth rates from the levels itself.
The other series fill in the picture around that GDP print. Household credit outstanding reached KRW 2,019,785.3 billion at the end of June 2026, up from 1,993,923.9 billion three months earlier. The house purchase price index rose to 100.676 in August, extending a run of monthly gains through every month of 2026 so far. On the rates side, monthly KOFR climbed from 2.56 per cent in May to 3.06 per cent in August, while the 2-year KTB yield moved from 3.62 to 3.70 per cent. Read together, the set shows an economy with steady growth, rising leverage and firmer short-term rates, which is exactly the context traders need before a Bank of Korea meeting.
How Traders Use KRW Data
- Growth as a global-cycle signal. Korea is export-heavy and semiconductor-intensive, so its quarterly GDP is often read as an early indicator for Asian trade. Strong growth surprises have tended to support KRW alongside other export-linked currencies.
- Household debt and the BOK's constraint. Rising household credit and house prices make the BOK more cautious about cutting rates. Traders watch these two series to judge whether easing is likely to be slow, even when growth is soft.
- US-Korea 2-year spread. The 2-year KTB yield against the US 2-year is a basic input into USD/KRW models; a wider negative spread has historically weighed on the won.
- Sentiment ahead of hard data. The CCSI and BSI arrive at 06:00 Seoul time, before most other Asian data. Sharp drops in either have often preceded weaker activity data.
- Funding conditions. KOFR shows where overnight won funding actually trades, a check on how BOK policy is transmitted to money markets.
USD/KRW also reflects structural flows that sit outside macro data: semiconductor export receipts, overseas investment by the National Pension Service and foreign equity flows. The onshore market now trades until 02:00 Seoul time, which extends the window in which data surprises can be priced. The USD/KRW dashboard shows the catalogue series alongside price.
Related Pages
- Bank of Korea guide for the Base Rate framework and the BOK's policy communication.
- South Korea indicator hub for every KRW series with charts and API documentation.
- USD/KRW dashboard for price and release markers.
- Release calendar for upcoming Korean events.
- Data coverage for all 22 currencies.
