South Korea’s consumer prices rose 3.1% in August from a year earlier, accelerating from 2.8% in July, while prices increased 0.2% from the previous month, the Ministry of Data and Statistics (MODS) said Wednesday. The index excluding food and energy rose 3.4% year on year, while petroleum prices increased 14.2%, including gains of 19.6% for diesel and 11.5% for gasoline.

A large part of the annual increase reflected mobile-phone charges, which rose 26.7% because discounts offered by SK Telecom after a data breach depressed prices a year earlier. MODS estimated that inflation would have been about 2.5% without that