By Cynthia Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s finance minister said on Wednesday the government would deploy all possible measures to stabilize financial markets if needed after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in an emergency national address.
“We will mobilize all possible financial and foreign exchange market stabilization measures, including unlimited liquidity injections,” Choi Sang-mok said in an emergency meeting with top economic officials in Seoul.
The Korean won declined to 1,430 per dollar, the weakest since October 2022, while also falling sharply against the yen to the weakest since May 2023, 961.89 per 100 yen, down 2.5%.
South Korea’s parliament, with 190 of its 300 members present, passed a motion on Wednesday requiring the martial law declared by President Yoon Suk Yeol to be lifted, live TV showed.
The opposition Democratic Party last week cut 4.1 trillion won from the total budget proposal of 677.4 trillion won ($470.7 billion) the Yoon’s government submitted, putting the parliament in a deadlock over control of the 2025 annual budget.
The parliament speaker on Monday stopped the revised budget from going to a final vote for now.
But a successful budget intervention by the opposition would deal a major blow to Yoon’s minority government and risk shrinking fiscal spending at a time when export growth is cooling.
The finance ministry said it would convene another emergency meeting among top officials at 7 a.m. local time (1930 GMT).
“These events will leave a huge dent in investor confidence in the economy and its financial markets,” Capital Economics said in a report.
(Reporting by Cynthia Kim, Jihoon Lee; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Mark Heinrich)