South Korea's economy was expected to grow at a moderate pace for the time being due to lingering external uncertainties such as Europe's debt crisis, the central bank said Friday.

"The domestic economic growth will stay at a moderate level for the time being due to external risk factors before recovering gradually to its long-term trend," the Bank of Korea (BOK) said in a statement unveiled after the January monetary policy meeting.

The central bank said the global economy was expected to recover at a significantly moderate pace, saying that downside risks to the global economic growth became bigger due to the European fiscal crisis, economic slowdown in major countries and the possibly persistent turmoil in global financial markets.

The BOK left the 7-day report rate unchanged at 3.25 percent for the first monetary policy meeting of this year, keeping its rate freeze stance for the seventh consecutive month.

The central bank said in a separate report that the South Korean economy showed signs of waning amid growing uncertainties such as the euro-region's sovereign debt problems, assessing that downside risks outweighed upside risks to the future growth path.

Touching on inflation, the BOK noted that consumer price growth would slow due to the low base effect and easing inflationary pressures from the demand-side factors, but the bank forecast that the slowing pace would be moderate amid the high level of inflation expectations.

The central bank also pointed out that upside risks to the consumer price inflation became stronger due to heightened geopolitical risks in the Mid-East regions. The nation's consumer prices advanced 4.2 percent in December from a year earlier, rising above the upper ceiling of the BOK's inflation target band 2-4 percent.