Low borrowing costs and eased regulations on home-backed lending have caused domestic mortgage loans to soar in recent months.
The outstanding home-backed loans extended by KB Kookmin Bank, the country’s biggest mortgage lender, stood at 84.6 trillion won ($80.3 billion) as of Oct. 28, up 836.5 billion won from the end of the previous month, according to industry data. The October gain is about 34 percent larger than the 623 billion won on-month increase tallied in September.
All other lenders saw a steep hike in their mortgage loan extension.
This rapid growth in mortgage loans is feared to exacerbate the country’s already-bloated household debt, which experts worry may hamper economic recovery by holding back domestic consumption.
Debt owed by households in the country amounted to 1,219 trillion won at the end of last year, accounting for 85.4 percent of Korea’s gross domestic product. This proportion was higher than the critical point of 75 percent set by the World Economic Forum. If loans extended to self-employed individuals are factored in, the actual amount of household debt will be much larger.
Bank of Korea Gov. Lee Ju-yeol last week agreed on the need to strengthen efforts to rein in the growth of household debt, expressing concern that it may dampen consumer spending.
Given the seriousness of the problem, economic policymakers in the administration appear unprepared or unwilling to work out fundamental solutions. Speaking at a parliamentary audit last week, Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan said household debt growth would have a “limited” impact on the economy.
His remark sounded similar to his predecessors’ views. It seems, however, that the warning against the rising level of household debt, which has been referred to by many analysts here as a time bomb on the economy, can no longer be ignored. Serious consideration should now be given to how to prevent the debt balloon from exploding to wreak havoc on the fragile recovery.
President Park Geun-hye and her economic team led by Choi have described the coming months as the last “golden time” to reinvigorate the sluggish economy. A set of external risks ― the termination of the U.S.’ quantitative-easing program, the weakening yen and China’s economic slowdown ― make it an equally urgent task to strengthen the fundamentals of the Korean economy.
Keeping household debt under control is the essential part of this work. The Bank of Korea may have to take the debt problem into account when it decides whether and when to further cut its base rate, which has reached a record low of 2 percent.
Increasing household income ― especially by creating more well-paying jobs in high-tech and service sectors ― will help fundamentally defuse the household debt risks.
