Korea’s small-business outlook has never once undershot
Korea publishes two business-sentiment readings for small merchants each month: what the coming month is expected to look like, and what the month just lived through actually felt like. Both run on the same 100-point scale, where above 100 means improving. Lined up month by month from 2014-03 to 2026-07, the forward-looking figure sat above the lived one 149 times out of 149 — 100.0% — with a median gap of 21.3 pts.
Read this as a property of two instruments, not of anyone's mood. We do not know that the two indices put the same question to the same people. A reading of 149 out of 149 in one direction, across twelve years and through a pandemic, is at least as likely to be how the pair is built as it is to be optimism. This page measures the distance. It does not name the cause.
How wide, and when
The gap is not constant. It ran 64.4 pts at its widest in 2020-03 and 1.2 pts at its narrowest in 2024-08. A reader converting the forward index into an expectation of the lived one needs that spread, not just the average.
| Month | Outlook | Lived | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-03 | 94.1 | 29.7 | 64.4 pts |
| 2015-03 | 118.4 | 60.4 | 58.0 pts |
| 2014-04 | 101.5 | 45.9 | 55.6 pts |
| 2021-01 | 89.8 | 35.8 | 54.0 pts |
| 2014-10 | 116.3 | 64.2 | 52.1 pts |
| 2014-11 | 100.5 | 52.5 | 48.0 pts |
| 2021-12 | 85.4 | 39.3 | 46.1 pts |
| 2020-02 | 87.1 | 41.5 | 45.6 pts |
| — narrowest — | |||
| 2024-08 | 56.6 | 55.4 | 1.2 pts |
| 2015-07 | 66.0 | 64.2 | 1.8 pts |
| 2024-07 | 57.9 | 54.5 | 3.4 pts |
| 2025-08 | 76.7 | 72.3 | 4.4 pts |
| 2021-09 | 65.2 | 57.6 | 7.6 pts |
The level, not just the gap
On the shared scale, 100 is the line between improving and worsening. The lived index cleared it in 1 of 149 months. The forward index cleared it in 15. Whatever the gap means, the two series do not merely sit at different heights — they fall on opposite sides of the line that the scale itself defines as the interesting one.
Year by year
| Year | Median gap | Months | Complete |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 36.9 pts | 10 | Partial year |
| 2015 | 25.8 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2016 | 24.3 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2017 | 25.0 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2018 | 24.0 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2019 | 19.7 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2020 | 21.3 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2021 | 18.5 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2022 | 22.1 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2023 | 20.9 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2024 | 14.1 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2025 | 13.8 pts | 12 | Yes |
| 2026 | 19.0 pts | 7 | Partial year |
2 of these years hold fewer than twelve months — the series starts mid-year and ends mid-year. They are marked rather than placed beside full years as though equivalent.
1 month appear in only one of the two series and are excluded from every figure above rather than filled in. The forward index runs one month further ahead than the lived one, which is what that exclusion is.
What this page does not tell you
- That the outlook is wrong. Two indices can both be accurate measurements of two different things. We lined them up because they share a scale and a subject, not because we established that they share a question.
- That you should discount the forward reading. A consistently offset instrument is a usable one — arguably more usable than an erratic unbiased one. Knowing the offset is the point; deciding what to do with it is not ours.
- Why the distance moves. It widened to 64.4 pts in 2020-03 and narrowed to 1.2 pts. We counted the movement. We did not test a single explanation for it.
- Anything about one business. This is a survey aggregate across a sector. It is a statistic, not a statement about any merchant.
Source: 중소벤처기업부/소상공인시장진흥공단 소상공인시장 경기동향(BSI) 조사, KOSIS orgId=142. Table DT_S0001N_001 · 소상공인 부문별 실적 및 전망(경기전반). Units: BSI(100 초과=호전, 미만=악화). Collected 2026-09-01. Every figure on this page is computed at build time from smb-outlook-gap.json by scripts/measure-smb-outlook-gap.mjs; none is transcribed by hand.