In 2030, deficit debt that must be repaid at the public's expense is expected to reach 1,300 trillion won, more than 280 trillion won more than this year.
As the national debt increases, interest costs are expected to increase and exceed 50 trillion won per year.
According to the Ministry of Planning and Budget on the 6th, deficit debt in next year's budget is 1,117.1 trillion won. This is an increase of 91.9 trillion won compared to this year’s supplementary budget (125.2 trillion won).
Deficit debt is expected to gradually increase to KRW 1,192.4 trillion in 2028 and KRW 1,245.8 trillion in 2029, reaching KRW 1,312.3 trillion in 2030.
Compared to this year (supplementary budget), it is an increase of 287.1 trillion won in four years.
During the same period, financial debt increased by 34.3 trillion won, from 387.6 trillion won to 421.9 trillion won.
The proportion of deficit debt in the total national debt is expected to gradually increase from 72.6% based on this year's supplementary budget to 73.5% next year, 74.5% in 2028, and 75.1% in 2029, and then expand to 75.7% in 2030.
On the other hand, the proportion of financial debt will decrease from 27.4% this year to 24.3% in 2030.
However, the size and proportion of deficit debt improved compared to 2028 (KRW 1,248.1 trillion, 75.0%) and 2029 (KRW 1,362.5 trillion, 76.2%) according to the previous mid-term plan (National Financial Management Plan for 2025-2029). This is interpreted as the impact of increased income, such as large-scale tax revenue growth due to the semiconductor super cycle.
Deficit debt refers to general accounting debt, local government net debt, national treasury debt obligations, and accounting and fund debt for the purpose of resolving and repaying debt.
Unlike financial debt, which can hold financial assets, deficit debt does not have assets corresponding to the borrowed money, so in reality, it has to be repaid at the public's expense.
For this reason, the fact that deficit debt increases more rapidly than financial debt is usually interpreted to mean that not only the quantity but also the quality of national debt is deteriorating.
The government has included the deficit debt forecast every year in the national fiscal management plan or the attached document, the national debt management plan, but did not disclose it in the documents submitted this year.
Regarding this, an official from the Planning Ministry explained, "There is no set format for the national debt management plan, so when we created a new form this year, the deficit debt part was omitted."
The explanation is that it was excluded in the process of reorganizing the content to suit changing circumstances.
However, major national debt statistics that have been included in documents submitted to the National Assembly have been omitted.
Instead, the Planning Office explained that new content was added to this year's form, such as international comparison of general government debt (D2), mid-term interest cost plan and international comparison.
When we checked the previous national fiscal management plans using the National Assembly Bill Information System, we found that the deficit and debt forecasts were included every year since 2006.
Interest costs are expected to continue to increase in the future as national debt increases.
According to the national debt management plan for 2026-2030, the national debt interest cost this year is 36.5 trillion won, an increase of 4.8 trillion won from last year.
It will gradually increase to 42.8 trillion won next year, 45.4 trillion won in 2028, and 48.9 trillion won in 2029, exceeding 50 trillion won to 53.3 trillion won in 2030.
The ratio of national debt interest costs to gross domestic product (GDP) will increase from 1.3% in 2026 to 1.5% in 2030.
The government announced, “We will manage national debt interest costs at a level of 1.5% of GDP in 2030.”
He added that compared to the level of general government interest expenditure (D2) in developed countries, Korea's is 1.3% this year and 1.5% next year, while the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average is 2.0% this year and 2.1% next year.
As the size of the economy grew due to favorable growth rates, financial indicators such as the ratio of national debt to GDP improved.
The national debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to be lowered from 50.6% based on this year's supplementary budget to 48.3% next year, then to 48.8% in 2029 and 49.0% in 2030.
The government explained, “This is a significant improvement of 9.0 percentage points (p) compared to the 2029 national debt ratio (58.0%) under the previous medium-term plan (2025-2029).”
