This is the highest figure since the statistics agency first started to apply the six-month criteria in June 1999. In 2000, the figure stood at 142,000 over the same period.

The combined number of unemployed South Koreans reached 1.11 million over the January-September period, up 51,000 on-year. This again is the highest number among available data over the past 19 years.

Amid the prolonged slump in the employment sector, a rising number of South Koreans are also giving up their efforts to find a job.

Throughout September, the monthly average number of such people came to 516,000, up 6.5 percent from a year earlier. The agency said that this again is the highest tally since the agency started to compile such data in 2014 to get a better understanding of the overall job market trend.

Due to the increasing number of prolonged jobseekers, the country's expenditures on unemployed benefits set another record.

The Korea Employment Information Service's spending on the unemployment benefits came to 5 trillion won ($4.37 billion) over the January-September period, marking a 23.1 percent spike from the same period in 2017. (Yonhap)