The Bank of Korea unveiled on Wednesday that the nation’s household debt topped 12-hundred trillion won, or about 972 billion U.S. dollars, for the first time at the end of last year.
 
According to the central bank, household debt for the fourth quarter of last year amounted to one-thousand-207 trillion won, up 41 trillion won from the previous quarter.
 
The growth was the sharpest to be posted since related statistics began to be collected in the fourth quarter of 2002.
 
The central bank said that total household debt last year surged 121 trillion won, or eleven-point-two percent, posting the sharpest growth since 2006.

The bank said that the total amount of loans taken out by households, excluding credit card purchase loans, amounted to roughly one quadrillion 142 trillion won last quarter, up more than 39 trillion won from the previous quarter.
 
In particular, the amount of loans that households got from deposit banks grew 22-point-two trillion won, including 18 trillion won in housing mortgage loans, to stand at nearly 564 trillion won.
 
The central bank said the boom in the market for apartments in the fourth quarter last year led to the sharp rise in household loans.