Asia-Pacific · GDP rank #11
South Korea
KR · KRW @ 0.0006580/USD
South Korea has the most card-intense consumer economy in the G20: credit-card spending alone runs at roughly 90% of nominal GDP, supported by a three-decade policy stack of tax credits for card use, mandatory acceptance and subsidised merchant pricing. Super-app wallets (KakaoPay, Naver Pay, Toss) sit on top of cards as their settlement backbone rather than displacing them. Project Han-gang's Phase 2 went live in March 2026 with nine banks testing won-pegged deposit tokens, while the new BOK governor has publicly prioritised CBDC and bank tokens over stablecoins.
Tab 05
Cross-border
Inbound and outbound remittance corridors, tourism flows, FX markup on retail cross-border, and the country's posture on stablecoin adoption. Corridor figures come from the World Bank RPW feed or the publishing central bank; both are cited when they disagree.
Remittance inflows
USD · 2023
Remittance outflows
USD · 2023
Inbound tourism spend
KRW · 2024
Outbound tourism spend
KRW · 2024
Avg. corridor cost
% · Q4 2024
roughly balanced
Top inbound corridors
- United StatesUS$3.8B
via bank
- JapanUS$1.1B
via bank
Top outbound corridors
- VietnamUS$1.8B
via MTO
- ChinaUS$1.4B
via bank
- PhilippinesUS$710M
via MTO
Cross-border card
Card flow leaving and arriving
Cards issued domestically and used abroad reflect outbound consumer travel and cross-border e-commerce; volume acquired from abroad reflects inbound tourism and foreign online shoppers.
Issued volume spent abroad
KRW/year · 2024
Acquired volume from abroad
KRW/year · 2024
FX cost
What consumers pay above the interbank
Retail FX markup is the spread between the mid-market rate and the rate the consumer receives — the single largest friction point in small-ticket cross-border.
- FX regime
- managed-float
- Reference
- KRW has floated since 1997 under BOK-MOEF framework
Source · Ministry of Economy and Finance
Full reference
Remittances
Net Position: roughly balanced
Source: