The Bank of Korea (BOK) said Wednesday it sold a net $103 million in the first quarter to help ease fluctuations in the local currency market.

The BOK began releasing such data in March 2019 to help boost the transparency of its market stabilization steps.

A BOK official said market smoothing operations in the first quarter came as the Korean currency weakened against the US dollar.

The Korean currency closed at 1,131.8 won against the US dollar on March 31, compared with 1,086.3 won at the end of last year.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the BOK bought a net $11.5 billion in market smoothing operations. (Yonhap)