In a meeting in Washington last Friday, Strategy and Finance Minister Kang Man-soo, and his Chinese and Japanese counterparts Xie Xuren and Shoichi Nakagawa released a joint statement on the agreements. The three agreed to hold more frequent talks on macroeconomics and financial policies and expand bilateral currency swap deals.

A currency swap allows one side to exchange a specified amount of one currency for another and give it back later.

President Lee Myung-bak talks with Strategy and Finance Minister Kang Man-soo at a meeting before the G20 financial summit in Washington on Saturday. /Yonhap

South Korea already has a currency swap deal worth US$4 billion with China and another worth of $13 billion with Japan. But they make it difficult to borrow foreign currency unless in a real crisis when a country has already applied for IMF bailout funds or will soon do so.

The government wants to expand the amount of the swap deals with China and Japan to $10 billion and $30 billion, respectively, and to borrow dollars whenever it wants, without strings attached.

Under the current swap agreements, South Korea can swap won for $4 billion worth of yuan from China and $10 billion in U.S. dollars and $3 billion in yen from Japan.

(englishnews@chosun.com )