Korea quietly rewrote 729 of its 2026 trade figures on 16 October. We kept the old ones.
Korea's official trade table is corrected in place, with no record of what it said before. Our daily snapshots caught the 16 October revision: eight months touched, March's surplus cut by $150 million, August's raised by $94 million.
AI-assisted, human-reviewed sourcing. Figures are pulled programmatically from the official sources listed at the end of this article and checked by an editor before publication.
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Korea publishes its trade figures in a public statistics table and then corrects that table in place. When a number changes, the old one disappears. The table records only the date of the latest change, not what it replaced.
So since 7 September we have taken a full copy of the table every few days. Comparing the copies from 13 October and 23 October shows what happened in between: on 16 October, 729 of the table’s 2026 figures were rewritten.
Eight months touched in one day
Every changed figure carries the same last-changed date, 16 October 2026. The revision reached back to January. Nothing from late 2025 moved.
| Month (2026) | Figures changed | Change to the total trade balance |
|---|---|---|
| January | 73 | −$82.1 million |
| February | 66 | −$20.9 million |
| March | 78 | −$150.2 million |
| April | 70 | −$16.9 million |
| May | 59 | −$1.7 million |
| June | 93 | −$1.1 million |
| July | 119 | +$14.4 million |
| August | 171 | +$93.8 million |
The more recent the month, the more figures changed: August had 171, more than twice January’s 73. The direction split in the middle of the year. Every month from January to June ended with a smaller surplus than before, and July and August with a larger one. Over the eight months together the surplus shrank by $164.8 million.
Small at the top, large underneath
At the national level the changes are fractions of a percent. The biggest was March imports, raised from $60.75 billion to $60.90 billion, or 0.25%. That one line is most of the reason March’s surplus fell by $150 million.
Underneath the total, by partner country, the corrections are far larger in proportion. Korea’s March imports from Kuwait were raised by 31%, from $397 million to $521 million. August exports to Australia rose 3.2% and to Malaysia fell 1.9%. A reader using the partner figures from early October was working with numbers that have since moved by several percent.
Why keep the old numbers
A revised figure is not a mistake; corrections are how official trade data gets more accurate. The difficulty is that this table keeps no history of them. A chart or model built on the figures as they stood on 13 October cannot be reproduced from the table today, and nothing on the page says it has changed.
That is why we keep the snapshots. The count above can only be made by someone who saved the earlier copy, and Korea’s statistics service does not save it. Our view on how far 2026 trade levels can be compared with earlier years is a separate question. This piece counts only what changed inside 2026, and when.
KOSIS table DT_1R11006_FRM101 (Korea Customs Service), snapshots of 13 and 23 October 2026. Thousand US dollars, converted to millions here. Not investment advice.
Data & Verification Notes
- Data as of
- Sources
- Cross-checks
- Comparing the 13 October and 23 October snapshots: 729 figures changed, 4,084 unchanged, 436 new (all September 2026, first published in the window) and 442 dropped (all September 2025 — the table shows a rolling twelve months, so the oldest month falls off as a new one arrives). Every changed row carries the same last-changed date, 16 October 2026.
- Revisions by month (number of figures changed): Jan 73, Feb 66, Mar 78, Apr 70, May 59, Jun 93, Jul 119, Aug 171. No figure from October–December 2025 changed.
- Total trade balance, before → after, thousand USD: Jan 8,689,288 → 8,607,143 (−82,145); Feb 15,538,140 → 15,517,240 (−20,900); Mar 26,611,409 → 26,461,241 (−150,168); Apr −16,935; May −1,727; Jun −1,136; Jul +14,409; Aug 34,785,482 → 34,879,268 (+93,786).
- Net effect on the January–August balance: −$164.8 million. The first six months were all revised down, July and August up.
- Largest single total-level change: March imports, 60,752,337 → 60,902,365 thousand USD (+0.25%). Largest partner-level change in value: Kuwait imports in March, 396,680 → 520,536 thousand USD (+31.2%).
- Excluded figures
- Why each figure was revised. Neither the table nor its notes say; customs revisions usually follow late declarations and corrections, but we did not confirm the cause of any single change.
- Whether 2026 trade levels themselves are comparable with earlier years. We have argued separately that they show a measurement break; this piece counts revisions within 2026 only.
- Revisions made before our snapshots began on 7 September 2026.
- This is not investment advice.
The full dataset behind these figures — every listed company, every row — is available to license. SeoulMarkets data for licence →
Not investment advice. SMarkets publishes data journalism for general information only. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security — any investment you make is at your own risk and responsibility. Figures are derived from official public data sources and may be revised by the issuing agency. Verify independently before acting.
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