---
ticker: "KRBOKRSV"
title: "South Korea Bank of Korea Reserve Deposits"
unit: "tril. KRW"
frequency: "Monthly"
source: "Bank of Korea (2003)"
release: "Updated Monthly"
category: "Monetary Data"
country: "KR"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://kred.dev/en/series/KRBOKRSV"
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"
latest_value: 98.70
latest_date: "2026-06-30"
first_date: "2003-10-31"
observations_total: 273
observations_shown: 120
---

# South Korea Bank of Korea Reserve Deposits

## Overview

Deposits banks keep to meet reserve requirements, a read on reserve conditions and funding strain.

## Key Figures

|  | Value | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Latest | 98.70 | 2026-06-30 |
| Change from previous | +4.25 | 2026-05-31 |
| Change over one year | -4.11 | 2025-06-30 |
| Highest on record | 107.39 | 2022-06-30 |
| Lowest on record | 10.93 | 2006-10-31 |
| Period covered | 2003-10-31 – 2026-06-30 |  |
| Observations | 273 |  |

## Recent observations

| Date | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2016-07-31 | 41.98 | -4.57 |
| 2016-08-31 | 44.01 | +2.03 |
| 2016-09-30 | 48.32 | +4.31 |
| 2016-10-31 | 43.30 | -5.02 |
| 2016-11-30 | 44.21 | +0.91 |
| 2016-12-31 | 46.20 | +1.99 |
| 2017-01-31 | 45.77 | -0.43 |
| 2017-02-28 | 46.84 | +1.07 |
| 2017-03-31 | 53.21 | +6.37 |
| 2017-04-30 | 47.22 | -5.99 |
| 2017-05-31 | 45.05 | -2.17 |
| 2017-06-30 | 48.75 | +3.70 |
| 2017-07-31 | 49.37 | +0.62 |
| 2017-08-31 | 52.24 | +2.87 |
| 2017-09-30 | 51.27 | -0.97 |
| 2017-10-31 | 50.05 | -1.22 |
| 2017-11-30 | 48.10 | -1.95 |
| 2017-12-31 | 48.12 | +0.02 |
| 2018-01-31 | 49.79 | +1.67 |
| 2018-02-28 | 53.07 | +3.28 |
| 2018-03-31 | 54.39 | +1.32 |
| 2018-04-30 | 49.62 | -4.77 |
| 2018-05-31 | 52.29 | +2.67 |
| 2018-06-30 | 57.12 | +4.83 |
| 2018-07-31 | 54.24 | -2.88 |
| 2018-08-31 | 60.15 | +5.91 |
| 2018-09-30 | 61.59 | +1.44 |
| 2018-10-31 | 60.02 | -1.57 |
| 2018-11-30 | 57.21 | -2.81 |
| 2018-12-31 | 57.11 | -0.10 |
| 2019-01-31 | 58.82 | +1.71 |
| 2019-02-28 | 62.26 | +3.44 |
| 2019-03-31 | 63.19 | +0.93 |
| 2019-04-30 | 58.24 | -4.95 |
| 2019-05-31 | 65.34 | +7.10 |
| 2019-06-30 | 64.90 | -0.44 |
| 2019-07-31 | 55.05 | -9.85 |
| 2019-08-31 | 65.24 | +10.19 |
| 2019-09-30 | 63.32 | -1.92 |
| 2019-10-31 | 64.46 | +1.14 |
| 2019-11-30 | 63.05 | -1.41 |
| 2019-12-31 | 66.28 | +3.23 |
| 2020-01-31 | 59.08 | -7.20 |
| 2020-02-29 | 67.30 | +8.22 |
| 2020-03-31 | 63.99 | -3.31 |
| 2020-04-30 | 67.46 | +3.47 |
| 2020-05-31 | 75.27 | +7.81 |
| 2020-06-30 | 83.69 | +8.42 |
| 2020-07-31 | 70.49 | -13.20 |
| 2020-08-31 | 79.54 | +9.05 |
| 2020-09-30 | 71.44 | -8.10 |
| 2020-10-31 | 73.88 | +2.44 |
| 2020-11-30 | 75.91 | +2.03 |
| 2020-12-31 | 74.10 | -1.81 |
| 2021-01-31 | 73.51 | -0.59 |
| 2021-02-28 | 82.33 | +8.82 |
| 2021-03-31 | 81.95 | -0.38 |
| 2021-04-30 | 80.60 | -1.35 |
| 2021-05-31 | 83.03 | +2.43 |
| 2021-06-30 | 86.25 | +3.22 |
| 2021-07-31 | 81.99 | -4.26 |
| 2021-08-31 | 86.42 | +4.43 |
| 2021-09-30 | 86.92 | +0.50 |
| 2021-10-31 | 83.01 | -3.91 |
| 2021-11-30 | 77.26 | -5.75 |
| 2021-12-31 | 81.37 | +4.11 |
| 2022-01-31 | 79.07 | -2.30 |
| 2022-02-28 | 88.23 | +9.16 |
| 2022-03-31 | 92.79 | +4.56 |
| 2022-04-30 | 90.38 | -2.41 |
| 2022-05-31 | 91.60 | +1.22 |
| 2022-06-30 | 107.39 | +15.79 |
| 2022-07-31 | 80.81 | -26.58 |
| 2022-08-31 | 97.98 | +17.17 |
| 2022-09-30 | 100.10 | +2.12 |
| 2022-10-31 | 88.80 | -11.30 |
| 2022-11-30 | 89.13 | +0.33 |
| 2022-12-31 | 101.26 | +12.13 |
| 2023-01-31 | 77.03 | -24.23 |
| 2023-02-28 | 95.30 | +18.27 |
| 2023-03-31 | 94.67 | -0.63 |
| 2023-04-30 | 92.36 | -2.31 |
| 2023-05-31 | 85.03 | -7.33 |
| 2023-06-30 | 92.52 | +7.49 |
| 2023-07-31 | 77.36 | -15.16 |
| 2023-08-31 | 95.83 | +18.47 |
| 2023-09-30 | 83.80 | -12.03 |
| 2023-10-31 | 84.19 | +0.39 |
| 2023-11-30 | 82.87 | -1.32 |
| 2023-12-31 | 93.15 | +10.28 |
| 2024-01-31 | 84.46 | -8.69 |
| 2024-02-29 | 84.24 | -0.22 |
| 2024-03-31 | 95.21 | +10.97 |
| 2024-04-30 | 82.99 | -12.22 |
| 2024-05-31 | 91.08 | +8.09 |
| 2024-06-30 | 98.29 | +7.21 |
| 2024-07-31 | 81.07 | -17.22 |
| 2024-08-31 | 95.87 | +14.80 |
| 2024-09-30 | 90.84 | -5.03 |
| 2024-10-31 | 81.26 | -9.58 |
| 2024-11-30 | 87.37 | +6.11 |
| 2024-12-31 | 90.51 | +3.14 |
| 2025-01-31 | 93.12 | +2.61 |
| 2025-02-28 | 90.78 | -2.34 |
| 2025-03-31 | 93.10 | +2.32 |
| 2025-04-30 | 88.89 | -4.21 |
| 2025-05-31 | 81.24 | -7.65 |
| 2025-06-30 | 102.81 | +21.57 |
| 2025-07-31 | 89.88 | -12.93 |
| 2025-08-31 | 93.22 | +3.34 |
| 2025-09-30 | 90.95 | -2.27 |
| 2025-10-31 | 92.79 | +1.84 |
| 2025-11-30 | 87.04 | -5.75 |
| 2025-12-31 | 98.86 | +11.82 |
| 2026-01-31 | 91.69 | -7.17 |
| 2026-02-28 | 83.75 | -7.94 |
| 2026-03-31 | 98.68 | +14.93 |
| 2026-04-30 | 102.68 | +4.00 |
| 2026-05-31 | 94.45 | -8.23 |
| 2026-06-30 | 98.70 | +4.25 |

## Definition

Balances that depository institutions maintain at the Bank of Korea to satisfy legal reserve requirements (필요지급준비금) under the Bank of Korea Act. Required reserve ratios range from 0% to 7% depending on the deposit type, with demand deposits subject to the highest ratio and long-term savings deposits to the lowest. Unlike the Federal Reserve's post-2008 ample-reserves regime, where reserves far exceed requirements and earn interest at the IORB rate, Korean banks hold reserves close to the required minimum, with excess reserves typically small relative to the total.

By the balance-sheet identity, reserves equal total assets minus currency, government deposits, RP sales, MSBs, MSA, and other liabilities. Within the Korea Net Liquidity framework, reserve deposits are not subtracted separately from total assets because they are already embedded in Net Liquidity as a residual component, and subtracting them additionally would double-count a liability already excluded by the identity. Reserve deposits are published as a standalone series for monitoring the required-reserve system and assessing the banking system's reserve position.

A rise in reserve balances above the usual required level suggests heightened precautionary liquidity demand in the banking sector, while balances held near the required minimum indicate normal reserve conditions.

## Methodology

Sourced from the reserve deposits item of the Bank of Korea's depository institution reserve statistics. Reported as monthly end-of-period balances, and because the raw series is denominated in billions of KRW, it is converted to trillions of KRW by dividing by 1,000.

## Applications in Economics

Reserve deposits are central to the operational framework of monetary policy implementation, serving as the medium through which the central bank's policy rate is transmitted to the interbank market. Kashyap and Stein (2012) analyze the optimal design of central bank balance sheets and show that the level and composition of reserves shape the efficacy of policy transmission. This effect is especially pronounced during periods of financial stress, when banks' demand for precautionary reserves rises. In Korea, where banks hold reserves near the required minimum, reserve deposit dynamics directly reflect the tightness of interbank liquidity conditions rather than the accumulation of excess liquidity.

The relationship between required reserves and overnight interest rates depends critically on the operational framework of monetary policy implementation (Bindseil 2004). In Korea's corridor system, where the Bank of Korea sets a policy rate and standing lending and deposit facilities bound the overnight rate, reserve deposits fluctuate within a relatively narrow band determined by required reserve maintenance periods. Gray (2011) extends this analysis to central bank balance-sheet management, demonstrating that reserve requirement policies interact with open market operations to determine the equilibrium reserve position of the banking system.

The shape of the reserve demand curve, and specifically the threshold at which reserve scarcity begins to affect overnight rates, depends on the payment system architecture and the distribution of reserves across banks (Bech and Keister 2017). Their framework models the demand for voluntary reserves, where banks hold reserves beyond the required minimum for settlement and precautionary purposes. For Korea, monitoring aggregate reserve deposits alongside the call rate–KOFR spread (KRCALLKOFR) provides complementary signals about interbank liquidity conditions.

Korea more closely resembles a scarce-reserves regime, under which the central bank must actively manage the supply of reserves through daily open market operations to keep the overnight rate near target, making reserve deposit dynamics a real-time indicator of the success of policy implementation. This regime stands in contrast to the Federal Reserve's transition to an ample-reserves framework (Ihrig, Meade, and Weinbach 2015).

## Applications in Financial Markets

For money-market participants, reserve deposit levels provide a direct measure of the banking system's capacity to absorb liquidity shocks and settle interbank transactions. Keister, Martin, and McAndrews (2008) analyze the relationship between aggregate reserves, individual bank reserve positions, and the efficiency of the payment system, finding that reserve scarcity can impair settlement flows and increase intraday liquidity risk. In Korea's required-reserves equilibrium, even moderate deviations from the required level can signal heightened funding pressures that manifest in overnight rate volatility.

Reserves transmit monetary policy to broader financial conditions through the bank lending channel, which operates through the reserve position (Friedman and Kuttner 2011). When reserve deposits are abundant relative to requirements, banks face lower marginal funding costs and can expand lending, while scarce reserves tighten lending. Borio and Disyatat (2010) argue that the relevant concept for financial stability is not the absolute level of reserves but the ease with which banks can obtain reserves through interbank markets and central bank facilities.

Elevated precautionary demand for reserves reliably signals increased counterparty credit concerns in the interbank market, a pattern that emerges from the conditions under which banks choose to hold voluntary reserves above the required minimum (Ennis and Keister 2008). Observing reserve deposits rising above the normal required level in Korea can therefore serve as an early indicator of stress in the unsecured interbank market, complementing the call rate–KOFR spread signal.

Changes in reserves primarily affect the composition of bank liabilities rather than the volume of lending, an empirical relationship between reserves, money supply, and bank lending established on U.S. data (Carpenter and Demiralp 2012). This finding has implications for how reserve deposit dynamics should be interpreted in the Korean context. For institutional investors, tracking reserve deposits alongside the other Korea liquidity indicator components enables a more complete assessment of whether observed financial conditions reflect genuine monetary policy shifts or mechanical balance-sheet dynamics.

## Statistical Tests

Over 270 observations from 2003-10-31 to 2026-03-31, the Bank of Korea reserve balances gives an ambiguous reading on the log-level, since the Dickey and Fuller (1979) and Phillips and Perron (1988) tests reject a unit root at p = 0.8154 and p = 0.0 while the Kwiatkowski et al. (1992) test also rejects stationarity, so no clean order is assigned. On the first difference of the log the Ljung and Box (1978) portmanteau rejects white noise at lags 12 and 24, Q = 259.33 and Q = 397.32 at p = 0.000 and p = 0.000. The Bai and Perron (1998, 2003) procedure finds no break in the mean, a reading consistent with the parameter-instability inference of Andrews (1993) on the differenced object (Perron 1989).

This series is an unadjusted monthly aggregate, so the seasonal battery is appropriate and is run, with the HEGY seasonal-unit-root test of Hylleberg et al. (1990), the QS seasonal portmanteau, and the seasonal-dummy F cross-read with Canova and Hansen (1995) finding deterministic seasonality rather than seasonal unit roots (Beaulieu and Miron 1992; Ghysels and Osborn 2001).

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What does the central bank liquidity panel for Korea track?

The components of the domestic central bank balance sheet identity together with the open market operations that add or drain reserves, including repo sales and purchases and the stock of stabilisation securities, plus a net measure of what remains with the private system.

### What does the net open market operations series show?

It nets draining against supplying operations into a single figure, so one number settles whether a period supplied or absorbed on balance. The components are published alongside it.

### How does central bank liquidity differ from the monetary aggregates?

This group measures base liquidity supplied by the central bank; the aggregates measure money and near-money held by the public. The multiplier linking them varies with bank lending behaviour and depositor preferences, so the two track each other only loosely.