SEOUL, March 6 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's services account deficit hit a new record high for two straight months to January as more students went abroad during the winter vacation, central bank data showed Tuesday.

The services account deficit posted the fresh monthly high of 4.49 billion U.S. dollars in January, breaking the prior record high tallied in the previous month, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).

The travel account deficit reached a new high of 2.16 billion dollars as students went on an overseas trip during the winter vacation season.

The number of South Koreans who went abroad was 2.867 million in January, up 22.4 percent from a year earlier. The number of foreign tourists to South Korea tumbled 21.7 percent to 956,000 in the same period.

Meanwhile, current account balance, the broadest measure of cross-border trade in goods and services, logged a surplus of 2.68 billion dollars in January, staying in the black for 71 months since March 2012.

It was attributable to the trade surplus in goods, which reached 8.11 billion dollars in January.

Exports, which account for about half of the export-driven economy, amounted to 52.07 billion dollars, while imports stood at 43.96 billion dollars.

Primary income account, which gauges investment and interest income as well as salary, registered a surplus of 680 million dollars in January, down from 1.18 billion dollars a year earlier.

Financial account, which measures cross-border capital flow without transactions in goods and services, recorded a net outflow of 4.11 billion dollars in January.