South Korea's trade deficit in 2022 topped $15 billion
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Korea Customs Service said Tuesday that exports in the first 20 days of June amounted to 31.3 billion dollars, a decline of 3.4 percent on-year.
Imports on other hand jumped by 21.1 percent to 39 billion dollars.
That makes a deficit for the month so far of more than 7.7 billion.
The same day, the Korea International Trade Association forecast the deficit for the year to reach 14.7 billion dollars.
If so, this would be the first deficit since the 2008 global financial crisis, and the biggest one since 1996.
The deficit has been driven primarily to the soaring cost of oil, all of which Korea imports. ■