South Korea Government Debt (% of GDP)
Everything national and local government owes combined, compared with the size of the economy.
52.4%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full South Korea economy17 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Updated automatically from official sources.Government Debt (% of GDP)
1990 to 2025
Source: IMF World Economic Outlook (GGXWDG_NGDP) · general government, % of GDP, annual, actual years only. The IMF's figures for the years after the one shown are projections, which this site does not publish, so the year under the figure is the most recent actual available, not a sign the feed has broken.
South Korea Government Debt (% of GDP) in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In South Korea, the government debt rose by 2.7pp in 2025, from 49.7% in 2024.
That is the highest reading in a record that starts in 1990.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 45.9% in 2020 to 52.4% in 2025.
Its average since 1990 is 27.6%, and the latest reading is above that.
South Korea is 39th of 62 countries in our Government Debt to GDP by Country ranking.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- IMF
- Series
- World
- Frequency
- Annual
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Not applicable, annual data
- Latest observation
- 2025
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
Data refreshed 2026-10-28. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
More South Korea indicators
Latest readings. Open any one for its full history.
Rankings
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