South Korea August inflation +1.7% y/y, much weaker than expected

[SEOUL] South Korea’s consumer inflation slowed to a nine-month low in August on a one-off factor of a drop in telecommunication prices, government data showed on Tuesday.

The consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.7 per cent in August from a year earlier, after rising 2.1 per cent in July. It was the slowest year-on-year rise since November 2024 and much weaker than a 2.0 per cent rise forecast in a Reuters poll.

Last month, telecommunication prices dropped 13.3 per cent, as the country’s biggest mobile carrier SK Telecom provided a discount of 50 per cent for monthly subscription fees to all of its 24 million customers after a data leak.

Core CPI, excluding volatile food and energy prices, rose 1.3 per cent from a year earlier, after rising 2.0 per cent in the previous month, according to Statistics Korea. It marked the slowest increase since August 2021. REUTERS