On April 19, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, held an emergency meeting to review international economic conditions via video conference with key officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance during his trip to Washington, D.C., aiming to check on the recent developments in the Middle East conflict and discuss sector-specific response plans.

With major foreign media outlets reporting Israel’s retaliatory attack on facilities in Iran, DPM Choi emphasized the heightened uncertainty of the situation during the meeting where he received real-time updates on the conflict and trends in financial markets and related sectors at home and abroad.

First and foremost, DPM Choi stressed the need to strengthen the government’s cross-ministerial emergency response system with a higher level of vigilance than ever before to ensure that the recent incident does not have a negative impact on the Korean Economy.

Although no direct disruptions in sectors such as energy, trade, supply chains, and maritime logistics were observed up to this point, DPM Choi requested that the joint emergency response team among agencies continue to operate throughout the weekend to keep a close watch on the situation while directing each ministry to enhance their sector-specific emergency response teams to cope with more intensively in accordance with the evolving situation.

As for the financial sector, he also called for concerted efforts from the relevant agencies to conduct real-time monitoring of market trends and immediate actions to be made on the back of the ongoing 94 trillion won market stabilization program when necessary. In terms of the foreign exchange market, he asked for prompt and resolute measures against excessive market fluctuations that deviate from the country’s economic fundamentals.

Please refer to the attached files.