Self-employed people in South Korea are slipping into deeper debt amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. 

According to the Bank of Korea(BOK) on Tuesday, the outstanding debt of self-employed persons amounted to 831-point-eight trillion won at the end of March, which is up 18-point-eight percent from a year earlier. 

The figure is presumed to have surpassed 840 trillion won in June, given the amount posted between April and June. 

Loans taken out by the self-employed increased by ten percent in the year before the outbreak of COVID-19. 

But the increase doubled to nearly 20 percent for a period of one year since March last year, when the full-blown outbreak of the epidemic began to take a toll on the economy. 

As of the end of March, two-point-45 million self-employed persons are in debt to financial institutions, with the average debt reaching 338 million won per person.