SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s economy unexpectedly shrank in the second quarter, official advance estimates showed on Thursday, logging the sharpest contraction since the fourth quarter of 2022.
Gross domestic product (GDP) for the April-June period fell 0.2% from a quarter earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis, data from the Bank of Korea showed, missing a 0.1% gain seen by analysts in a Reuters poll.
That comes after an expansion of 1.3% in the first quarter, the fastest quarterly growth since the fourth quarter of 2021.
On an annual basis, Asia’s fourth-largest economy grew 2.3%, compared with a gain of 3.3% in the first quarter of 2024.