It looks like South Korea's struggling exports are continuing to weigh on the economy... with the goods account seeing its smallest surplus in more than four years in February.
Our Ko Roonhee starts us off.
The goods account records a country's goods transactions with the rest of the world... by subtracting the amount of imports from exports.
And according to the Bank of Korea on Thursday, Korea's goods account marked its lowest surplus in more than four years in February.
The account had a surplus of around 5-and-a-half billion U.S. dollars for the month,... down from 5-point-7 billion the previous month.
Exports dropped by 10-point-8 percent on-year-- their sharpest decline since 2016.
The central bank attributed the low export figure to poor chip sales...which account for roughly 20-percent of all outbound shipments.
Over the past few months, unit prices of semiconductors have dropped due to low demand and high inventory levels in data centers.
According to DRAMeXchange's report back in February, contract prices of DRAM products across all major application markets decreased by more than 15-percent on month in January.
A separate report added that inventory levels have kept climbing since the fourth quarter of 2018... and most DRAM suppliers are holding around six weeks' worth of inventory.
Another reason for the smaller goods account surplus is the drop in petroleum products exports.
A rise in competition from the U.S. and China in the petroleum sector contributed to the fall.
And the central bank also pointed out that the slowdown in China's manufacturing sector negatively affected Korea's exports.
Korea's current account, which includes trade in services, was in surplus for the 82nd consecutive month.
The services account deficit fell to around 1-point-8 billion dollars from a deficit of 2-point-six billion a year earlier.
This was due to an improvement in the travel account... after an uptick in the number of visitors from China and Japan.
Ko Roon-hee, Arirang News.