With the soaring US stock market... Overseas account reported amounts near 100 trillion won

The amount of money that individuals and corporations residing in Korea managed through overseas accounts last year totaled 95 trillion won. As overseas stock markets soared last year, the reported amount increased by about 24 trillion won compared to the previous year. The average reported amount per individual filer is 7.66 billion won.

According to the '2025 Overseas Financial Account Reporting Results' released by the National Tax Service on the 29th, this year's reported amount is 94.5 trillion won, a 45.6% increase from last year's 64.9 trillion won. The number of filers also increased by 38.3% (1,901 people) to 6,858. The subjects of reporting are residents and corporations in Korea whose balance in overseas financial accounts exceeded 500 million won even for a single day as of the end of each month from January to December last year. Residents refer to individuals who have an address in Korea or have lived in Korea for more than 183 days.

The National Tax Service analyzed that the increase in reporting this year was due to a rise in the value of virtual assets, resulting in more virtual asset filers, and an increase in the reported amount for stock accounts. The reported amount of overseas financial accounts grew significantly from 59 trillion won in 2021, 64 trillion won in 2022, to 186.4 trillion won in 2023. After sharply declining to 64.9 trillion won last year, it has risen again this year.

By asset type, 1,992 people reported 48.1 trillion won in overseas stock accounts this year, an increase of 355 people and 24.5 trillion won compared to last year. Virtual asset accounts, newly included in reporting from 2023, were reported by 2,320 people this year—an increase of 1,277 people from last year—for a total of 11.1 trillion won. They account for 27% of all filers.

Among the filers, individuals reported 26.7 trillion won, with 6,023 individual filers. That is an increase of 1,871 people and 10.3 trillion won from last year. Analyzing by decile, the top 10% hold 68.8% of all reported amounts. These individuals reported an average of 30.49 billion won per person.

By country (excluding virtual asset accounts), it was found that individual filers hold the largest reported amounts in accounts in the United States, while corporate filers hold the most in accounts in India. The National Tax Service announced that it will conduct strict verification of suspected cases of unreported overseas accounts using international information exchange data, and will impose fines, notifications, criminal charges, publicize names, and pursue tax collection.

Kim Ik-hwan, Reporter lovepen@hankyung.com