South Korea’s Price Spike May Prompt BOK to Extend Easing Pause

South Korea’s consumer inflation quickened in October as a weaker won lifted energy and food costs, reinforcing the case for the central bank to extend the pause in its monetary easing cycle as it seeks to cool a housing market rally.

Consumer prices advanced 2.4% from a year earlier, accelerating from a 2.1% gain in September, the Ministry of Data and Statistics said Tuesday. The pace, which exceeded the median forecast of 2.2% in a Bloomberg survey of economists, was the fastest since July 2024, when prices increased by 2.6%.