Cash held by households surpassed 90 trillion won for the first time in the first quarter of this year.

Cash accounts for the largest share of all financial assets ever.

According to the Bank of Korea, financial assets held by households and non-profit organizations (hereinafter referred to as households) at the end of March of this year amounted to KRW 3975.79 trillion.

Compared to the end of last year, financial assets decreased by 0.14% (5.625.7 billion won).

This is the first decline since the fourth quarter of 2018 (-1.07%).

Cash out of the household's total financial assets amounted to KRW 90,873 billion, an increase of 3.4% (KRW 2.963.7 billion) over the same period.

This is the first time that household cash assets have exceeded 90 trillion won since statistics were compiled in 2008.

The growth rate compared to the previous quarter was the highest since the third quarter of 2018 (4.5%).

Previously, it was 5 times that the rate of increase compared to the previous year exceeded 3%.

The increase in cash assets in the first quarter appears to be due to the spread of Corona 19.

Hwang Se-woon, a research fellow at the Capital Market Research Institute, explained, "In Korea, the fear of Corona 19 was the most severe in the first quarter."

As financial assets decreased and cash increased, the share of total financial assets increased to 2.27% in the first quarter of this year, the largest ever.

This proportion rose slightly after rising to the 2% level for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2016 (2.01%), but increased each quarter from the second quarter of 2019 (2.14%).

(Photo = Yonhap News)