HONG KONG — Asian markets mostly rose on Friday, with Japanese shares gaining on a weaker yen, alt-hough Seoul shares plunged as South Korea’s political crisis deepened with a second impeachment vote.
Japan’s Nikkei index closed up 1.8 percent, with the yen’s recent weakness proving a boon for major exporters. The yen hit 158.08 per dollar on Thursday evening — its lowest in almost six months — be-fore rebounding somewhat on Friday.
In Seoul, the market closed down by 1.02 percent after the won plunged to a 16-year low of 1,480.20 per dollar on Friday morning.
South Korea is struggling to emerge from political turbulence in the wake of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration this month, which prompted his impeachment. Acting President Han Duck-soo was also impeached Friday in a vote that prompted ruling party lawmakers to protest with angry chants and raised fists.
South Korea’s business outlook for January fell 7.3 points to 82.4 in the Bank of Korea’s composite sen-timent index, marking the biggest month-on-month slide since April 2020, according to data released Friday. The survey of almost 3,300 firms was conducted between Dec. 11 and 18.
In Japan, the yen was “marginally stronger” on Friday, Bloomberg reported, after data showed infla-tion in Tokyo rose for a second month in December.
Other positive figures from Japan showed industrial production declined less than expected in No-vember, while retail sales came in higher than estimated last month.
With the country’s unemployment rate holding at 2.5 percent in November — low by international standards but slightly above Japan’s pre-Covid 19 pandemic average — Moody’s Analytics said on Fri-day that the data confirmed their view that “employment conditions are wobbly.”
Investor attention is now focused “on whether the Nikkei average will expand its rise to recover to the 40,000 points range by the end of the year,” said Kosuke Oka, an analyst at Monex Securities.
Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda bewildered observers last week by suggesting a prolonged pause in the institution’s monetary policy tightening, in the face of domestic and international economic un-certainties, which had sent the Japanese currency tumbling.
Ueda said on Wednesday rates would be “adjusted” if the situation continued to improve on the eco-nomic and price fronts, leaving investors without a clear signal on a possible interest rate hike and con-tributing to the yen’s slide.
“With the calendar year winding down and little in the way of tier-one economic data, the market is content mainly to drift until something shakes it from its slumber — likely a late-year squeeze or per-haps a Trump-driven shift in global economic sentiment,” said Stephen Innes from SPI Asset Manage-ment, ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump retaking the White House in January.
In Asia, Shanghai, Mumbai, Malaysia, Taipei, Singapore, Sydney and Bangkok were all in the green. Hong Kong was flat, while Manila was down.
London was down while Frankfurt and Paris were both up in early European trade.
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