The Bank of Korea announced that South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves totaled US$403.07 billion as of the end of last month, showing a month-on-month increase of US$1.1 billion.
Last month, the central banks’ foreign currency-denominated assets rose in value in terms of the U.S. dollar due to its depreciation. In April and May this year, the foreign exchange reserves continued to decrease amid U.S. dollar appreciation.
Marketable securities such as government and government agency bonds and asset-backed securities totaled US$373.84 billion to account for 92.7 percent of the total foreign exchange reserves while deposits in foreign central banks and major global banks added up to US$18.49 billion to take up 4.6 percent. The IMF SDR and the IMF position totaled US$3.46 billion and US$2.49 billion, respectively. The gold reserves remained at US$4.79 billion to account for 1.2 percent of the total.
As of the end of May, South Korea ranked ninth in the world in terms of the size of foreign exchange reserves. China topped the list with US$3.101 trillion, followed by Japan (US$1.308 trillion), Switzerland (US$804.3 billion), Saudi Arabia (US$517.1 billion), and Russia (US$495.2 billion).
