East Asia Econ

East Asia Today

On Friday BOK governor Shin Hyun Song gave a short but interesting speech. Today's main release was China's May fx settlement data, indicating that the pace of net capital inflows remains solid. Taiwan's annual IIP data show that despite the huge CA surplus, net foreign assets fell in 2025.

Paul Cavey

Jun 15, 2026 • 2 min read

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Korea – Shin's surer

BOK governor Shin Hyun Song gave a speech on Friday to mark the 76th anniversary of the bank's founding. It was short, but worth highlighting, because he sounded more confident about the outlook, and downplayed the significance of uneven growth as a factor for monetary policy.

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Last week, next week

Three themes: whether the weakness in the activity data releases of a month ago in China was noise; Japan, where one hike is unlikely to be enough to really change market conditions; and the semi super cycle, which should be having more impact on fx and rates (in Taiwan) than has yet been evident.

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East Asia Today

Monetary data for China for May and April wage growth were released late in the day, so some charts summarising both. And while semi-driven nominal growth is near 20% in both Korea and Taiwan, the volume and price composition is very different.