South Korea posted a current account surplus for the 22nd month in December, but the surplus narrowed from the previous month as the service account turned negative due to tourism-related shortfalls, the central bank said Monday.

The current account surplus reached US$3.96 billion in December, down from a revised $4.56 billion in the previous month, according to a provisional report by the Bank of Korea (BOK). The current account is the broadest measure of cross-border trade.

The current account remained in the black for the 22nd straight month on the back of robust exports, which account for about 50 percent of the Korean economy.

For the whole year of 2011, South Korea posted a current account surplus of $27.65 billion, down from $29.39 billion the previous year and marking the lowest since $3.19 billion tallied in 2008 after the global financial crisis.

South Korea's goods balance posted surplus of $3.85 billion in December, down from a revised $4 billion one month earlier. For 2011, the goods balance surplus narrowed to $32.1 billion.

The country's goods account has stayed in the black since January of 2009 despite worries that the public debt crisis in Europe may dampen its exports, as an increase in overseas shipments of steel and auto products offset declining sales of mobile devices and display panels, the BOK said.

Asia's fourth-largest economy posted a 10.8 percent on-month increase in customs-cleared exports in December as demand from the Middle East and Japan surged, outweighing the widened export decline to the eurozone countries, the central bank said.

For the whole year of 2011, South Korea's exports grew 19.3 percent from 2010 on a customs clearance basis.

The service account, which includes expenditures by South Koreans on overseas trips and studying abroad, swung into the red in December with a deficit of $205.2 million due to widened losses in travel and other business accounts.

The financial account, covering cross-border investments, posted a new outflow of $4.15 billion in December, narrowing from a revised net outflow of $6.29 billion in November. (Yonhap News)