S. Korean shares retreat on U.S. fiscal cliff concerns (2)

The re-emerging worries about the U.S. fiscal issue offset positive news from Europe. After a marathon meeting that lasted over 10 hours, the eurozone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund agreed to provide financial aid to Greece, while agreeing to cut the Greek debt-to-GDP ratio to 124 percent by 2020 and below 110 percent by 2022.

Concerns over the global economic growth weighed on the market. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) cut its global growth forecast for this year to 2.9 percent from an earlier estimate of 3.4 percent made in May.

On the domestic front, South Korea's current account balance kept its surplus trend for 9 months in a row. The country's current account surplus reached 5.82 billion dollars in October due to a faster expansion in exports than imports, indicating that the economy may begin to escape from the so-called recession-type surplus.

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