🇦🇺 Australia vs 🇰🇷 South Korea

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. The two currently owe about the same — a gap of $33.3 billion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, Australia ranks 77th by debt-to-GDP and South Korea 76th. Measured per person, Australia is 21st and South Korea 34th.

Analysis

By total government debt, Australia ranks 14th and South Korea 15th among the 135 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in Australia is roughly 1.9× that in South Korea ($38,491 vs $20,294 per person).

Both sit below 60% of GDP, the EU's Maastricht reference value — Australia at 52% and South Korea at 52%. A low ratio is not on its own a sign of strength: some governments borrow little because lenders will not lend to them.

The gap between them is widening: Australia's debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($5K/sec vs $2K/sec for South Korea), adding roughly $217,641,600 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: South Korea's population (52M) is about 1.8× Australia's (28M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

Australia and South Korea are both grouped under this site's “Asia-Pacific” region, so this is, in effect, an intra-regional comparison as well.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

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