South Korea's economic growth stayed below 1 percent for three straight quarters, boosting worry about the prolonged low-growth trend, central bank data showed on Tuesday.
Real gross domestic product (GDP), seasonally adjusted for inflation, reached 375.04 trillion won (328.7 billion U.S. dollars) in the second quarter, up 0.7 percent from the previous quarter, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).
It was up from a 0.5 percent quarterly expansion tallied in the first quarter, but the second-quarter figure marked the zero-percent growth for the third consecutive quarter. From a year earlier, the real GDP increased 3.2 percent during the April-June period.
Exports, which account for about half of the economy, gained 0. 9 percent in the second quarter from the prior quarter due to demand for semiconductors as well as oil and chemical products. Imports rose at a faster pace at 1.9 percent.
But, contribution of net exports, or exports minus imports, to the second-quarter growth recorded a negative 0.3 percentage points. Private consumption, another engine for economic expansion, increased 0.9 percent in the second quarter, turning around from a 0.2 percent reduction in the first quarter.
Facility investment rebounded from a 7.4 percent decline in the first quarter to a 2.9 percent expansion in the second quarter, but investment in the construction sector rose 2.9 percent during the April-June period, less than halving a 6.8 percent growth in the previous three-month period.
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