The Bank of Korea and the US Federal Reserve Board on Thursday signed bilateral currency swap arrangements totaling at $60 billion, to be effective for the next six months, South Korea's central bank said.

"The latest (US-Korea) currency swap deal seeks to reduce the strain upon the recently struggling global dollar currency market," the BOK said in a late night release.

The US Fed conventionally had permanent currency swap deals with five other central banks -- Canada, Britain, Japan, Switzerland and the European Central Bank.

"The US dollar liquidity provided through the swap deals will be immediately injected to the market," the BOK said.

"We expect (such measure) to help stabilize the foreign exchange market here amid its recent dollar supply imbalance."

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)