Bank of Korea said its new news sentiment index (NSI) rose to 106.47 last month, up 4.64 points from the prior month, and has remained above 100 for five consecutive months. ^[1] The Bank of Korea announced on August 1 that it will publish a new News Sentiment Index (New NSI) starting August 7 via the Economic Statistics System. ^[2] The Bank of Korea raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 3 percent on Thursday and lifted its 2026 growth forecast to 3.3 percent. ^[3] On 2026-09-01, the Bank of Korea reported that applying the new calculation method produced a news sentiment index of 100.59 for August 31, 2026, above the baseline of 100 that indicates optimism. ^[4] The new index uses a Korean-specialized language model, expands the sentence sample from 10,000 to 20,000, and includes neutral sentences in the calculation formula, which the Bank of Korea said reflects news context and economic meaning more precisely. ^[5] The Bank of Korea announced that starting this month it will publish a new version of the NSI, improved to select articles highly relevant to the domestic economy. ^[6] The Bank of Korea's new NSI fell to 92.88 in March after the Middle East war broke out, then rebounded to 110.64 in April. ^[7] Consumer prices in South Korea rose 2.8 percent in July, while core inflation reached 2.6 percent, its highest level since December 2023. ^[8] Essential food prices surged in the second quarter, with rice rising 13.2 percent, potatoes 11.1 percent, and eggs 9 percent. ^[9] Monthly interest expenses for the bottom 20 percent of households jumped 36.1 percent year on year in the second quarter, nearly three times the 12.1 percent increase for all households. ^[10] The new NSI increases the daily sample of sentences from 10,000 to 20,000 and classifies selected articles by current and future time to calculate sentiment for each timeframe. ^[11]