SEOUL, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- South Korea's foreign exchange reserves in October totaled $212.3 billion, down $27.4 billion from September, the Bank of Korea said Tuesday.
The October total represented the steepest fall since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and was blamed on higher liquidity supply needed to fight the global financial crisis, the Korea Times reported.
It was also the seventh straight month of decline, Yonhap News reported.
"Despite higher investment profits and an early end of the currency swap deals with the state pension fund, foreign reserves declined as authorities expanded the dollar supply to the banking sector in a bid to calm jitters sparked by the global credit crunch," the bank was quoted as saying.
"A stronger U.S. dollar also brought down the dollar conversion value of assets in other currencies like the euro."
The South Korean won has depreciated about 26 percent against the U.S. dollar so for this year, the report said.
Until the end of September, South Korea ranked as the world's sixth-largest holder of foreign exchange reserves. China with reserves of $1.9 trillion tops the list, followed by Japan with nearly $996 billion, Russia with $556.1 billion, India with $286.3 billion and Taiwan with $281.1 billion.
