Questions answered
FAQ
Are the numbers measured in real time?
No. Official statistics are published monthly or quarterly. This site interpolates over time using the most recent snapshot and the published annual growth rates.
Are national debt and government debt the same?
Strictly, no. This site uses D1 (central + local government debt). Broader definitions (D2 general government, D3 public sector) are separate series.
What counts as household debt?
The Bank of Korea household credit aggregate — household loans (mortgages, personal credit, etc.) plus merchandise credit (credit cards, installments).
Nominal or real GDP?
Nominal. Debt is reported in nominal terms, so matching nominal GDP keeps the ratio consistent.
Is the exchange rate live?
It refreshes every 30 minutes from a public FX API for USD/KRW, USD/JPY and USD/EUR. On failure it falls back to the build-time snapshot.
Will the data update more often?
Yes — we plan to integrate the BoK ECOS and KOSIS APIs so figures update automatically at each release.
Found an error?
Drop a comment or a GitHub issue with the source — we roll corrections into the next deploy.
Why do debt definitions differ from country to country?
Korea’s D1, Japan’s central-government debt, the US Treasury’s Debt to the Penny and Spain’s EDP debt are all official figures, yet they are different constructs. Set side by side as plain debt-to-GDP ratios, the definitional gap disappears, so match the scope and the base date before you compare.
Can I cite the clock in an article or paper?
Yes, under CC-BY-4.0. Prefer the time-pinned /api/snapshot.json over the live value, which changes every second, and keep the response’s citeAs and baseAsOf so anyone can reproduce the exact figure you quoted.
Why does household debt matter as much as national debt?
A government can buy time through tax revenue, maturity management and monetary policy, but for households the interest rate, the job market and house prices land straight in the monthly cash flow. The shock travels by a different route, so the two debts have to be read together.
How do FX reserves, the current account and external debt relate to debt?
They gauge a country’s capacity to pay the outside world. If the debt is owed in the home currency and that currency is a reserve currency, funding pressure stays mild; where foreign-currency debt is large, the exchange rate and interest rates can lurch together and the nature of the risk changes.
Which currency are the amounts shown in, and how is conversion handled?
You can read the figures in KRW, USD, JPY, EUR or CNY, with cross-rates derived around a USD axis. The rates refresh every 30 minutes from a public FX API, and if a request fails the build-time snapshot is used instead.
Can I embed or reuse the data as a widget?
Yes. Pick the country, metric, theme and size in /widget/studio, then paste the generated snippet into a blog or newsletter to drop in a live counter. For the raw figures, use the public JSON API (CC-BY-4.0) documented at /api-docs.