U.S. puts S. Korea on foreign exchange policy 'monitoring list'

WASHINGTON, April 29 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Treasury Department put South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan and Germany on its "monitoring list" for foreign exchange policies.

"Korea has a significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States and a material current account surplus," the department said in the Report on Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.

"Treasury estimates that during the second half of 2015 through March 2016, the Korean authorities intervened to resist depreciation of the won during periods of financial market turbulence, representing a shift from several years of asymmetric intervention to resist appreciation," the report said.

The report also urged South Korea to limit its foreign exchange intervention "only to circumstances of disorderly market conditions and to increase the transparency of its foreign exchange operations."

"Treasury will closely monitor and assess the economic trends and foreign exchange policies of the economies on the Monitoring List," the report said.

jschang@yna.co.kr
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