Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon has stressed during talks with his U.S. counterpart that South Korea should not be included on Washington’s list of currency manipulators, the Finance Ministry said. 

Talking on the phone with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday, Kim said that South Korea does not meet the U.S. criteria for a currency manipulator and it should not be included on the list.

The U.S. Treasury Department is set to release its currency report this month.  

Last October, Washington placed South Korea on its "monitoring list," as Seoul met only two out of the three criteria to be designated as a currency manipulator – trade surplus and current account surplus. The third criterion is market intervention.