The U.S. government has kept South Korea on its list of countries to be closely monitored for currency practices.

In its first half of the year report on Friday, the Treasury Department included 12 countries on its monitoring list requiring close attention to their currency practices and macroeconomic policies.

The twelve include China, Japan, Germany, Italy and India.

Countries will be monitored when they meet two out of three criteria which include a bilateral trade surplus of over 15 billion dollars in the past year and a current account surplus of more than three percent of gross domestic product. Another gauge is intervention in the foreign currency market in at least eight out of 12 months with net purchases totaling over two percent of GDP.

The department said South Korea's trade surplus with the U.S. posted 22 billion dollars and its current account surplus accounted for four-point-nine percent of GDP in 2021.

South Korea has been placed on the monitoring list since April 2016, with the exception of the first half of 2019.