The South Korean central bank has frozen the nation's key interest rate at a record low of one-point-five percent for the ninth consecutive month.

The Bank of Korea(BOK) held its monthly monetary policy meeting on Thursday and decided to leave the benchmark rate steady for March. 

The BOK had lowered the rate four times between August 2014 and June last year by a total of one percentage point but left it steady ever since.

Experts say the central bank seems to have frozen the rate for this month in order to stabilize the local financial market amid growing volatility in the Chinese market, rather than to boost domestic consumption.