▲ This captured image from the Treasury Department shows the front page of the department's Report to Congress on Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

(LEAD) S Korea-US monitoring list

(LEAD) U.S. keeps S. Korea on its 'monitoring list' for FX policy

(ATTN: ADDS more info in paras 4-11)

By Song Sang-ho

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (Yonhap) -- The United States has kept South Korea on its list of countries to monitor for their foreign exchange policies, a 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 South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland. All except Thailand were on the list in the June 2025 report.

South Korea was excluded from the list in November 2023 for the first time since April 2016 but put back into it in November 2024. It has since remained on the list.

Korea's inclusion on the list was attributable to its bilateral trade surplus with the U.S. and material current account surplus, the report showed.

Its current account surplus increased considerably during the report period, totaling 5.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the four quarters through June 2025, up from 4.3 percent a year earlier, it said.

Its bilateral trade surplus reached US$52 billion during the report period, more than doubling its pre-pandemic high of $18 billion in 2016.

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 U.S. 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.

The report pointed out that real exchange rates among several major trading partners with sizable current account surpluses have depreciated over the course of last year, especially for South Korea, China and Vietnam, which it said shifted relative prices "in a direction making it likely they will run even larger surpluses."

Touching on the Korean currency's depreciation against the U.S. dollar in late 2025, the report said that it was not in line with Korea's "strong" economic fundamentals as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier.

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