The U.S. Treasury cited the won’s sharp depreciation and Korea’s large external surplus in keeping Seoul on its currency monitoring list.
The United States has maintained Korea on its list of countries to monitor, citing the won’s steep depreciation despite Korea’s expansion of current account surplus, a U.S. Treasury Department report showed Thursday.
The department released the updated list in the semiannual “Report to Congress on Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.”
The latest monitoring list comprises Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland. All were on the list in the previous report released in January.
“Korea’s current account surplus further expanded in 2025, driven by technology exports, even as its bilateral trade surplus with the United States marginally decreased,” the report read. “Notwithstanding these large external surpluses, the Korean won has come under sustained depreciation pressure, and the authorities sold foreign exchange on net during the Report period, particularly in late 2025.”
Korea was excluded from the list in November 2023 for the first time since April 2016 but was placed back on it in November 2024. It has since remained on the list.
U.S. trading partners are put on the list when they meet two of the three criteria set by the U.S. Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015.
The criteria are a bilateral trade surplus with the United States of at least $15 billion, a material current account surplus of at least 3 percent of GDP and persistent, one-sided intervention in the foreign currency market for at least eight months during a year and with net purchases totaling at least 2 percent of an economy’s GDP over a 12-month period.
BY JIN MIN-JI, YONHAP [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]
