Macro
Korea alone tells you nothing. Compare it.
An allocator choosing between Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney and Hong Kong needs the same indicator for all five, on the same axis, with the same as-of date — and the United States beside them, the rate the capital is funded against. That is what these boards are for.
01
Headline short rates, ten years
The cost of short money in five APAC markets and the United States on one axis, monthly since 2016. The US line is the benchmark: dollar funding prices off it, and Hong Kong's base rate follows it under the currency peg. Singapore has no policy rate — MAS runs an exchange-rate band — so its 3M SORA is drawn dashed and labelled as the market rate it is.
Korea
Bank of Korea · Base Rate
3.00%
2026-08 · +1.75 over 10y
Japan
Bank of Japan · Policy Rate
1.00%
2026-08 · +1.10 over 10y
Singapore
MAS · 3M SORA
1.19%
2026-08 · +1.05 over 10y
Market rate — no policy rate exists
Australia
Reserve Bank of Australia · Cash Rate
4.35%
2026-08 · +2.85 over 10y
Hong Kong
HKMA · Base Rate
4.00%
2026-08 · +3.25 over 10y
United States
Federal Reserve · Fed Funds target, midpoint
3.63%
2026-08 · +3.25 over 10y
* The Singapore line shows a market rate rather than a policy rate, and is drawn dashed. MAS runs monetary policy through an S$NEER exchange-rate band and publishes no policy rate, so 3M SORA is the nearest comparable; the BIS policy-rate dataset has no series for Singapore. The rates belong to different monetary regimes, so compare them with care: Japan at 1.00 and Australia at 4.35 reflect different systems as much as different policy stances. Every figure comes from the Remarble Earth snapshot dated below.
02
The APAC panel
Every indicator Remarble Earth publishes for five APAC markets and the United States, the benchmark they are priced against, with each market's latest reading placed in its own ten-year range. Empty cells are markets that publish no such series, and are left empty.
Korea
Seoul
Japan
Tokyo
Singapore
Singapore
Australia
Sydney
Hong Kong
Hong Kong
United States
New York
Shading is a level, not a verdict — a dark unemployment cell is a high unemployment rate, and a policy rate of 4.35% is a different monetary regime from 1.00%, not a worse one. Two rows carry no shading at all: each residential price index is set to its own country's base year and FX is a different currency in every column, so those levels cannot be put on one scale and are left unshaded rather than shaded wrongly. An empty cell means the market publishes no such series, and is left empty rather than filled from a neighbour. Panel 2016-09 to 2026-09.
03
Global megacity positioning — purchase burden against rent burden
The two burdens move independently, so ranking on either alone hides the thing that decides whether a rental market exists. Plotted together, the 12 cities split on the sample means and the quadrant a city lands in is the readable result.
Point at the plot or a city to read its figures.
Seoul sits in the lower right. Buying is hard — 29.5x income, 4th of 12 and above the 21.6x average. Renting is not: at 25.5% of net income it is the lowest burden in the set, against a 57.9% average. A city where a household cannot buy but can comfortably rent is the structural case for institutional rental housing, and it is why this sector exists here at all.
Price-to-income is Numbeo's published ratio. Rent-to-income is derived by Remarble as the city-centre one-bedroom rent divided by one earner's average monthly net salary, both in USD, so all 12 cities are comparable with each other. It is a different calculation from Korea's own jeonse-and-monthly rent burden measure, and the two should not be read against one another.
04
Living affordability, 12 cities
The same three measures read as a ranking — price-to-income, rent-to-income and city-centre one-bedroom rent. Seoul is highlighted in every view.
Hover over a city to see all four measures (purchase burden, rent burden, one-bedroom rent and net salary), or tap to pin it. The quadrant chart above highlights the same city.
05
Korea macro grid, fourteen indicators
The fourteen indicator groups Remarble Earth reads Korea's cycle from, drawn from its 68-column macro set. Each column is shaded against its own published readings, and a figure identical to the month before is the last one carried forward rather than a new observation.
Rule-based summary
- 7 of the 14 indicators sit in the outer fifth of their own published range: household debt to GDP near the bottom, commodity price index near the top, current account near the top, unemployment rate near the bottom, plus 3 more.
- Of the 14 indicators with a year-earlier comparison, 11 are higher and 3 are lower. Measured by movement within each series' own range rather than in raw units, the indicators that moved most are current account (up 63% of its range) and producer inventories, YoY (up 48% of its range).
Overall, 7 of 14 indicators sit in the outer fifth of their own range and 7 within the middle half. For September 2026, 12 of the 14 indicators have no new release and carry an earlier month's figure forward; one more is unchanged because the Bank of Korea held the rate.
Generated by fixed rules from the grid below; a reading aid, not investment advice. Direction is the change over the preceding twelve months; level is the position within the same series' trailing 78 months. Both leave out carried-forward figures, so each column is measured at its latest release rather than at the newest row.
Colour shows where a figure sits between its column's lowest and highest published values: pale at the low end of the range, dark at the high end. It is a position in a range rather than a rank or a judgement, and each column is scaled to itself, so one step of colour is a different number in every column. Hover over a column to see its scale in its own units.
Hover over any cell for detail, or tap to pin it.
Shading shows only where a figure sits within its series' own range, so a dark cell under Labour indicates high unemployment. Levels are not comparable between columns: four are index levels on their own bases, one is a count, one a currency amount and the rest percentages, so each column is scored only against itself. Each column's hue identifies the indicator and nothing else. Amber, used in the source badge rather than in the grid, marks a figure we have not verified. The grid runs from April 2025 to September 2026, scored against 78 months.