Daily Times

South Korea’s foreign exchange trading rose last month on surging demand for the U.S. dollar and foreign currency derivatives, central bank data showed on Thursday. The daily average transaction of foreign currencies and foreign currency derivatives in the local interbank market came to 31.68 billion U.S. dollars in January, up 5.74 billion dollars from the previous month, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). It was attributed to higher demand for the U.S. currency, of which the daily average trading soared to 10.7 billion dollars in January from 6.7 billion dollars in the prior month. Demand for foreign exchange (FX) swaps grew from 12.93 billion dollars to 13.95 billion dollars in the cited period. Foreign capital worth 4.95 billion dollars flowed into the South Korean stock market last month, but the local bond market posted a net foreign fund outflow of 5.29 billion dollars.