Seoul, Aug 4 (IANS): South Korea's consumer prices rose 0.7 percent in July from a year earlier, keeping the zero-percent increase for eight straight months, a government report said on Tuesday.

The consumer price inflation fell below one percent in December 2014 and stayed at the zero-percent level for eight months in a row, Xinhua quoted the Statistics Korea report.

Core consumer prices, which exclude agricultural and oil products, gained two percent on-year in July, staying above two percent for the seventh consecutive month.

The OECD-method core prices, excluding food and energy costs, increased 2.5 percent last month, keeping the two percent level for the past seven months.

The so-called livelihood prices (daily necessities) slid 0.1 percent in July, but fresh food prices gained six percent, keeping an upward trend for the third straight month.

Prices for agricultural, livestock and fisheries products advanced 3.7 percent in July from a year earlier due to the effect of drought, but the farm goods prices slid 0.3 percent compared with the previous month.