South Korea's finance minister said Sunday the country expects "no direct impact" from China's real estate crisis on the Korean economy.
Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho said in a TV program aired earlier in the day that "domestic financial institutions preemptively took a cautious stance against investments in the Chinese real estate market. They invested a very small amount of money in Chinese property developers."
The South Korean government is looking at a variety of economic indicators while monitoring the Chinese market, he said, noting that China will likely announce measures to resolve the real estate crisis.
Real estate constitutes about 30 percent of China's gross domestic product, making it the single biggest contributor to the world's second-biggest economy after the United States.
China's property-sector crisis appears to be getting worse as new home sales are plunging, Chinese property giant Evergrande Group has recently filed for bankruptcy in the U.S., and another debt-laden Chinese property firm Country Garden may default on its debts.
Source: Yonhap News Agency