While North American markets, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average are up across the board along side good news in one of the largest U.S. trading partners — China — international markets are unstable and chaotic. Yoon Jeung-hyun, Minister of Strategy and Finance.

“As Eastern European economies are exposed to a possible financial crisis, worries over additional global financial turmoil increase, causing foreign exchange rates, interest rates, and stock prices to fluctuate,” said the Minister to AP news. Additionally, AP reported, about a month ago that Standard and Poor’s said “all the ingredients for a crisis are in place” for a Eastern European credit crisis — rising government debts and an increased reliance on foreign debts.

Central banks in Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Slovakia as well as financial authorities in Hungary and Poland, released a statement responding to these claims Wednesday — even before the Yoon Jeung-hyun story hit the press — that recent reports about the states of their economies were “misleading.”

“The published information accompanying these initiatives is often simplified and misleading,” the report said.

Late last month, debt and credit rating agency Moody’s warned that local subsidiaries of Western banks in the area could be hurt heavily by the international monetary crisis.

South Korea’s economy began shrinking in the last quarter of 2008, where a 3.4 per cent GDP collapse was seen for the first time since the country was one of about twelve significant countries hit by the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

Korean currency, the won (KRW), is at it’s lowest point in about a decade, currently sitting at $1 USD to ₩1,550 KRW.

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