The possibility for South Korea's headline inflation to stay at a high level is very low, a Bank of Korea (BOK) economist said Sunday.

According to a report by the BOK economist Kim Tae-jung, the persistency rate of the country'consumer price inflation came in at zero, indicating that the currently high inflation would come back to the previously stable level.

The economist said that the on-year consumer price growth stayed at a high level in 2011 due mainly to supply-side shocks in the agricultural and petroleum sectors rather than the higher rate of persistency.

Persistency of inflation was defined as the pace at which high inflation return to the long-term equilibrium level or the previous level after soaring due to economic shocks that lift prices such as oil shock.

South Korea's headline inflation showed a stable trend of movement since the inflation targeting was adopted in 1998. The inflation averaged 6.1 percent over the decade to 1996 with the standard deviation of 2.0 percent, but the average inflation decreased to 3.2 percent after the cited period with the standard deviation of 0.9 percent.

However, concerns over the persistently high inflation deepened in 2007 when the headline inflation began to rise amid higher global oil prices. The country's consumer price inflation surpassed 3.5 percent, or the upper ceiling of the BOK's inflation target band, for five straight quarters since the first quarter of 2008, while the inflation stayed at 4.0 percent, or the upper limit of the target band, in 2011.

Meanwhile, the persistency rate for core inflation showed a high level of 0.6, the economist said, adding that it takes around three quarters for the higher core inflation to return to the long- term equilibrium level after soaring on economic shocks.