The U.S. inflation rate continued to slow in December, raising hopes that the soaring inflation trend has possibly peaked.

The U.S. Department of Labor said on Thursday that the U.S. consumer price index(CPI) rose six-point-five percent in December from a year earlier, falling for the sixth consecutive month after peaking at nine-point-one percent in June.

The December figure is the lowest on-year gain since October 2021, and also marks the first on-month drop at zero-point-one percent since May 2020, only a couple of months after COVID-19 reached the country.

Core inflation, which strips food and energy from the calculation, rose zero-point-three percent in December from a month earlier and five-point-seven percent from a year earlier.

The core CPI rose an average of four-point-three percent for a period of three months through November, the lowest in about a year.

The tapering inflation is raising expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will slow the pace of rate hikes, which the Bank of Korea has been tracking closely while continuing to raise its key interest rate to narrow the gap with the Fed’s in a bid to corral the depreciation of the won.