Oil Price in Korea, Republic of — Brent & WTI Crude Today

South Korea is a major oil importer and one of the world's largest petroleum refining hubs. Korean refiners purchase Brent-linked crude from the Middle East and export refined products across Asia, making Brent prices central to the Korean energy economy.

Classified here as a net importer, Korea, Republic of trades against the Dubai/Oman average and Brent. That is the pricing reference the sections below work from — the headline Brent number quoted at the top of this page is the global marker, not necessarily the price Korea, Republic of settles at.

Korea, Republic of produces no meaningful volume of crude, so every barrel consumed has to be bought at an internationally set price. That makes the Brent benchmark a direct input into the trade balance: a sustained move in crude shows up in the current account, in the currency, and eventually in domestic inflation.

Asian refiners buy most of their crude on Dubai/Oman-linked term contracts from Gulf producers, and top up with Brent-linked Atlantic Basin cargoes when the Brent–Dubai spread makes that arbitrage work.

Korea, Republic of runs refining capacity at export scale. That changes the exposure profile completely: the country buys crude and sells products, so what matters is the refining margin — the crack spread between the crude it takes in and the gasoline, diesel and jet it ships out — rather than the crude price on its own. A high Brent price with wide cracks can be a better outcome here than cheap crude with collapsed margins.

Crude is invoiced in US dollars, so buyers in Korea, Republic of face two prices at once: the Brent price and the KRW exchange rate. A weakening KRW raises the local cost of a barrel even when Brent is flat, which is why domestic fuel prices in currency-exposed markets often fail to fall when the benchmark does. The reference rate used in the estimates on this site is 1,370 KRW per USD.