National Accounts of Korea, 1911-2007: A Long Term Series of Principal Indicators (in Korean)

There are three series of statistics for the national accounts of Korea: (1) the present series, beginning from the year 1970 onwards, as found on the Bank of Korea's online homepage, which is updated, for example, whenever there is a base year shift, (2) the old series from the Bank of Korea which covers the years 1953-70, and (3) the estimated series from 1911-40 before the liberation period. The estimated series covers the entire Korean peninsula, but the coverage of the other two series after the liberation period is confined to South Korea. These three statistical series conform respectively to the UN's System of National Accounts(SNA) that were released in 1993, 1953, and again 1968. The purpose of this paper is to continuously connect the series, and produce a long term series of principal indicators on national accounts, which covers the years 1911-2007 with a blank out period from 1941-52. The discontinuities between the present series, and the old series and estimated series counterparts are scrutinized, and an explanation of how to modify the latter two to link with the former is provided. Further examination of the related Maddison's(2008) series of per capita GDP of South Korea was also conducted, from which it was concluded that the estimate provided for the years before 1953 do not have proper supporting evidence.