The Korea Student Aid Foundation (Chairman Bae Byungil) announced on the 9th that it had issued a total of 610 billion won in bonds from January to March this year to support student loans for the first semester of 2025, providing 1 trillion won in support to 300,000 university and graduate students.
The average funding interest rate for the first quarter of this year was 2.81%, which is 0.51 percentage points lower than last year's rate of 3.32%.
This year, with the expansion of the student loan interest exemption program and other policy improvements, the scale of student loan support is expected to increase, and total annual bond issuance is projected to reach 2.3 trillion won, about 800 billion won more than last year (1.5 trillion won).
Of this, an additional 1.7 trillion won is expected to be issued during the second to fourth quarters of this year.
Since 2010, the Korea Student Aid Foundation has secured stability by issuing government-guaranteed bonds for which the government guarantees principal and interest repayment. Since August 2019, the foundation’s bonds have been recognized for their social value and have been issued as 'social value bonds,' further strengthening their public interest.
Bae Byungil, Chairman of the Korea Student Aid Foundation, said, "We will actively support university and graduate students with low-interest tuition and living expense loans by securing stable and low-interest funding through the issuance of government-guaranteed bonds."
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