South Korea's corporate bankruptcies stayed at a high level as companies have trouble in raising funds in the debt market, central bank data showed Tuesday.

The number of companies that went belly-up was 103 in January, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). The reading was unchanged from the previous month after falling to 93 in November last year.

The high level of failures came as local firms were in trouble to borrow money via the corporate bond market. Market conditions for the neediest companies became unfavorable after Kukdong Engineering & Construction, a midsize builder, filed for court receivership in September last year.

Companies with a rating of BBB-plus or below repaid around 680 billion won (630 million U.S. dollars) for three months through January as they failed to refinance debts. Investment-grade companies sold a net 6.4 trillion won (5.92 billion dollars) in bonds in the cited three-month period.

The premium of company notes with a BBB-minus grade over similar maturity government securities widened around 13 basis points (bps) since September last year, while the spread for AA- minus rated bonds narrowed about 13 bps.

The number of failures in the manufacturing and service industries increased by 6 and 2 respectively last month, while the figure for the construction sector declined by 6 in January.

The number of newly established firms jumped 1,154 from a month before to reach 6,938 in January, the highest in six months. The surge in start-ups was attributable to more business days caused by the Lunar New Year's holiday that fell in January last year and February this year.

The default rate on corporate bills, including bonds, checks and promissory notes, came in at 0.14 percent last month, up 0.01 percentage point from the prior month.