Customers shop at a supermarket in Seoul, Thursday.
Yonhap Korea's consumer inflation accelerated to a 26-month high in May, driven by soaring oil prices amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, reinforcing market expectations that the Bank of Korea (BOK) could raise the base rate in July, market watchers said Tuesday.
Consumer prices, a key gauge of inflation, rose 3.1 percent last month from a year earlier, marking the fastest pace of growth since March 2024, according to data released by the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
The increase was largely driven by higher energy costs.
Prices of industrial goods rose 4.2 percent from a year earlier, while petroleum product prices jumped 24.2 percent, contributing 0.92 percentage points to overall inflation.
