5 Things You Missed This Week — Korea Exports +105.4%, China Retail +1.1%, Japan Core CPI 2.1%

South Korea's exports for October 1–20 more than doubled from the same period a year earlier (up 105.4%, before adjusting for working days). In the same week, Korea's September employment rate for people aged 15 to 29 came in 1.1 percentage points below a year earlier, and China's September retail sales rose 1.1%. Our last issue said we'd watch the Bank of Korea (BOK) rate decision and the September visitor estimate from the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), and to those we've added China's growth, Japan's prices, and Korea's exports and jobs. The places where exports and the numbers at home pull apart are gathered in PRISM Insight, and figures we couldn't check against primary documents are labeled as such.

1. Bank of Korea Holds Its Rate at 3.00%, With All Seven Board Members in Favor

The BOK's Monetary Policy Board held its base rate at 3.00% on October 22. The decision statement says "all seven members of the Monetary Policy Board voted in favor" of the hold. It comes after two hikes, in July (to 2.75%) and August (to 3.00%). With uncertainty rising over the Middle East situation and other factors, the statement said, the board needed to "examine the effects of the two rate increases." It expects growth this year and next to "considerably exceed" the August forecasts (3.3% and 2.9%), but didn't put a number on how far.

Markets had expected at least one dissenting vote for a hike, as reported by Korean outlets News1 and the Korea Financial Times. We read the decision in the BOK's original Monetary Policy Decision statement, and the quotes here are PRISM translations from the Korean; we confirmed the market expectation only through those two outlets' reports. The statement says the board "will decide on the timing and pace of further rate increases," so even while holding, it left the door open to more hikes.

2. Foreign Visitors to Japan Fall 5.0% in September, With Koreans at a Record for the Month

In its September estimate released on October 21, JNTO put foreign visitors to Japan at 3,103,700, down 5.0% from a year earlier. Visitors from South Korea reached 842,300 (+25.6%), the most for any September on record, and Taiwan (595,600, +13.0%) also hit a September high. Visitors from China fell 44.5% to 430,800 and were down 55.5% for January–September combined. JNTO said higher airfares tied to the situation in the Middle East, along with flight cuts and typhoon cancellations, pushed many markets below last year's levels.

These figures come from JNTO's original PDF, and the 2026 numbers are estimates (推計値) and provisional figures that may be revised later. By PRISM's calculation, the September gain in Korean visitors (about 172,000) was roughly half the drop in Chinese visitors (about 345,000). For Japan's tourism industry, it's a second straight month below last year, after August (-9.6%). The tables in our tourism story, which our last issue said we'd extend to January–September, still run only through August.

3. China's Third-Quarter Growth Comes In at 4.5%, With September Retail Sales Up 1.1%

China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on October 19 that third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.5% from a year earlier. That follows 5.0% in the first quarter and 4.3% in the second, for 4.6% growth over the first three quarters. In September, industrial output (value added of industrial enterprises above designated size) rose 5.5%, and retail sales (total retail sales of consumer goods) rose 1.1%. For January–September, fixed-asset investment (excluding rural households) fell 7.2% and property development investment fell 20.6%, while exports rose 16.4% in yuan terms.

Sponsored

Advertise with Us

[email protected]

Sponsored

In the headline of its release, the bureau described the economy over the first three quarters as '总体平稳' ("generally stable"). The body of the release also includes the sentence "国内需求不足问题仍较突出" ("the problem of insufficient domestic demand remains relatively prominent"). We checked the numbers and the original sentences in the NBS release, and the English renderings are PRISM translations. Read alongside the September producer prices (up 5.0%) and consumer prices (up 0.9%) in our last issue, output and factory-gate prices are climbing while retail sales growth has stayed in the 1% range.

4. Japan's September Core Inflation Hits 2.1%, Back Above 2% for the First Time in Nine Months

Japan's core consumer price index, which excludes fresh food, rose 2.1% from a year earlier in September, according to nationwide figures released on October 23 by the Statistics Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. That's up from 1.7% in August, and it's the first time in nine months, since December 2025 (2.4%), that the measure has topped the Bank of Japan's 2% price target. The index excluding both fresh food and energy rose 2.4% (August: 1.9%). Food excluding fresh food rose 2.9%, while rice (regular non-glutinous rice, excluding the Koshihikari variety) fell 21.1%.

The market forecast (the median in a QUICK survey) was also 2.1%, as reported by Nikkei. We read the released figures in the ministry's original PDF, and confirmed the forecast only through that single Nikkei report. The BOK's decision statement puts Korea's September consumer inflation at 2.9%, higher than Japan's all-items rate for the same month (2.1%).

5. Korea's October 1–20 Exports Up 105.4%, With the Youth Employment Rate Down 1.1 Points in September

Korea's exports for October 1–20 came to $61.6 billion, up 105.4% from a year earlier, according to preliminary trade figures the Korea Customs Service released on October 21 (as posted by the KDI Economic Information Center). Chip exports rose 222.5%, and average daily exports of $4.74 billion were the highest for any October on record. The 105.4% figure isn't adjusted for working days, and last year this period included a holiday stretch around the Chuseok harvest festival (October 3–9).

In September employment data released on October 16 by Korea's Ministry of Data and Statistics (MODS, formerly Statistics Korea), the number of employed people rose by 113,000 from a year earlier. The employment rate for young people aged 15 to 29 fell 1.1 percentage points to 44.0%, and their unemployment rate rose 0.6 percentage point to 5.4%. Manufacturing employment rose by 16,000, its first increase in 27 months, as reported by Smart Today and other outlets. PRISM couldn't check this against the original, and the remaining figures are based on the KDI posting. Exports here are 20-day preliminary figures and jobs are September data, so a same-month comparison will have to wait for October's employment data.

What to Watch in the Next Two Weeks

The Deep Dive comparing how South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China and the US are responding to oil prices, which our last issue said would run on October 20, has moved to October 27. Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix reports third-quarter earnings the next day, October 28, at 9 a.m. Korea time (per the company's notice). The release will let readers set the "concerns over slowing profitability in the semiconductor sector," which the BOK's statement cited as a reason stock prices fell, against the company's own numbers. The US Federal Reserve's policy committee (FOMC) meets on October 27–28.

Korea's advance estimate of third-quarter GDP hadn't come out as of October 23, and PRISM couldn't confirm its release date. We also haven't confirmed release dates for the next real-wage figures for Korea and Japan, which our last issue said we were waiting for. The BOK's next Monetary Policy Board meeting is on November 26, outside the two-week window. What to watch at that meeting is whether the growth outlook, which this statement described only as set to "considerably exceed" earlier forecasts, comes with a number.