South Korean banks saw their year-on-year earnings surge 35.6% in 2010 thanks to increased interest income and profits from sales of stock holdings. Their combined net income in 2010 was won9400bn ($8.38bn), up 5.6% from won6900bn in 2009, itself an improvement on the crisis-hit figures of the previous two years.
However, with the good news came the bad. The non-performing loan (NPL) rate for domestic banks hit a six-year high in 2010, its worst since 2004 when the NPL rate was 1.9% in the wake of South Korea's 2003 credit card crisis. NPLs among the country's 18 local banks surged from won8400bn to won24400bn at the end of 2010, accounting for 1.86% of South Korea's total loans.
