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Cleaning work is underway at the main building of the Blue House as the presidential office prepares to relocate from Yongsan to Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul. / Park Sung-il, Asia Today

South Korea’s presidential office said Thursday it is maintaining close communication with the United States after Washington redesignated the country as a currency monitoring target.

Cheong Wa Dae said the nation’s foreign exchange authorities are in “close and ongoing communication” with the U.S. Department of the Treasury following the decision.

The presidential office noted that the U.S. Treasury reaffirmed in its latest currency report that the recent weakness of the Korean won does not align with South Korea’s economic fundamentals.

At the same time, Cheong Wa Dae said it understands the redesignation was made in a somewhat mechanical manner based on the Treasury Department’s evaluation criteria.

South Korea was removed from the currency monitoring list in November 2023, marking its first exclusion in more than seven years since April 2016. However, it was placed back on the list in November 2024, shortly before the launch of the Trump administration.

According to the U.S. Treasury, South Korea was redesignated due to a sharp increase in its current account surplus, as well as a significant rise in its trade surplus with the United States in goods and services.

The Treasury said South Korea’s current account surplus reached 5.9 percent of gross domestic product over the four quarters through June 2025, up from 4.3 percent a year earlier. The increase was driven almost entirely by goods trade — mainly semiconductors and other technology-related products — while income and services trade remained largely unchanged.

It added that South Korea’s current account surplus now exceeds its pre-pandemic five-year average of 5.2 percent of GDP. The country’s surplus in goods and services trade with the United States climbed to $52 billion, more than double the pre-pandemic peak of $18 billion recorded in 2016.

In its semiannual report on the macroeconomic and foreign exchange policies of major trading partners, the Treasury placed South Korea on the monitoring list alongside China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland.