SEOUL, October 11 (AJP) - South Korea's central bank earned a record 16.9 trillion won ($12.6 billion) from managing its foreign assets in 2025, helped by a weaker won that raised the value of its overseas earnings, data showed Sunday.
The total was up 32 percent from 12.8 trillion won in 2024, according to data the Bank of Korea (BOK) submitted to People Power Party lawmaker Lee Jong-wook, who sits on the National Assembly's finance committee.
The BOK holds its foreign assets in dollars and other currencies but keeps its books in won. When the won weakens, the same foreign earnings convert into more won. In its 2025 annual report, published in March, the BOK said a higher won-dollar exchange rate and rising securities prices drove the increase.
The figure counts only realized income. That covers interest on bonds and deposits, dividends and gains from selling securities, minus management costs.
How much of the record came from the currency and how much from investment performance cannot be measured from the outside. The BOK does not disclose its rate of return or the total size of its foreign assets. It says publishing the total would expose the scale of the government's foreign exchange stabilization fund and its capacity to intervene in the currency market, and that attention to short-term returns could undercut its priority on keeping reserves safe and liquid.
The earnings now carry weight beyond the central bank's balance sheet. Under the tariff agreement reached with Washington last year, South Korea committed $200 billion in cash investment in the United States, capped at $20 billion a year. The BOK has told lawmakers that the assets it puts toward that commitment will not exceed the returns on its foreign holdings.
The money moves through the Korea-U.S. Strategic Investment Corporation, a public agency created under a law passed in March. The BOK and the foreign exchange stabilization fund entrust assets to the corporation, which sends them to the United States. The first transfer, $2.4 billion, went out last month for the first project, a gas-fired power plant in Encinal, Texas.
Returns have swung widely over the past decade. They stayed in the 8 trillion won range from 2016 to 2018 and rose to 13.8 trillion won in 2021. They then collapsed to 3.9 trillion won in 2022 and recovered to 4.9 trillion won in 2023 before the jump in 2024.
The BOK has also handed more of its portfolio to outside managers. Externally managed assets made up 25.5 percent of its foreign assets at the end of 2025, up from 18 percent at the end of 2016. Of the 74.5 percent it ran directly, cash and cash-like assets accounted for 10.6 percent of the total, the highest share in a decade.
South Korea's foreign exchange reserves stood at $440.56 billion at the end of September, down $1.72 billion from a month earlier. The BOK attributed the drop to lower foreign currency deposits from financial institutions, the transfer of assets to the investment corporation and a lower dollar value for its non-dollar holdings. It said the amount and timing of further transfers had not been decided.
AJP Takeaways
- The Bank of Korea earned a record 16.9 trillion won ($12.6 billion) from managing its foreign assets in 2025, up 32 percent from 12.8 trillion won in 2024, citing a higher won-dollar exchange rate and rising securities prices.
- The Bank of Korea does not disclose its rate of return or the total size of its foreign assets, so the share of the record that came from the weaker won rather than from investment performance cannot be measured from the outside.
- The Bank of Korea has told lawmakers that the assets it puts toward South Korea's $200 billion cash investment commitment to the United States, capped at $20 billion a year, will not exceed the returns on its foreign holdings, and a first transfer of $2.4 billion went out last month. The return figures come from BOK data submitted to People Power Party lawmaker Lee Jong-wook, while AJP added the U.S. investment funding details and September reserve figures from separate BOK disclosures.
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