South Korea warns about disorderly currency movements

[SEOUL] South Korea's finance ministry issued a verbal warning against disorderly currency market movement on Monday as the won declined more than 1 per cent against the dollar by mid-day.

"We're closely monitoring speculative transactions that seems to be taking advantage of unstable market sentiment. The herd-like behaviour (in the won) seems excessive short-term," a finance ministry official said in a phone call to Reuters.

Investors tend to regard phone messages from fx authorities as official verbal interventions in the onshore currency market.

As of 0208 GMT, the won was down about 0.84 per cent against the dollar at 1,202.2 as part of a global sell-off in riskier assets.

REUTERS