Although the pandemic led to a significant drop in outbound investment from Korean investors in the first half of 2020, they remain focused on global real estate as a long-term investment strategy, with many buyers continuing to pursue opportunities abroad, according to CBRE Korea’s September COVID-19 and Outbound Investment Viewpoint report.

The depth and breadth of Korean investors’ experience in investing in overseas real estate is considerable, with many pension funds, securities companies and insurance firms among the most active institutional buyers in recent years. The number of outbound real estate investment funds — which are popular with Korean investors — totalled 762 in 2019, up from 139 in 2014. As of the end of 2019, these investment funds possessed KRW 53 trillion (US$46 billion) in assets under management.

According to the report, South Korea’s National Pension Service has been at the “forefront of the trend of deploying capital int