The weight of the U.S. dollar assets in South Korea's foreign-exchange reserves fell to the lowest in five years as the central bank increased the Chinese yuan-denominated assets and gold holdings to diversify its reserve portfolio.

The rate of the dollar-denominated assets to the total foreign- exchange reserves fell 3.2 percentage points from a year earlier to 57.3 percent as of the end of 2012, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said in its annual report.

The reading was the lowest since the bank began to unveil related data in 2007. South Korea's foreign-exchange reserves reached 326.97 billion dollars as of end-2012, the seventh largest in the world.

"The BOK began to invest in yuan bonds and stocks last year, while increasing gold holdings, as part of efforts to diversify foreign assets from a long-term perspective," the central bank said in a press release.

The central bank was granted the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) license in Dec. 2011, before being awarded a combined quota of 300 million dollars for the QFII in March 2012. The granted quota was all invested into China's A- share equity market.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) allowed the BOK to purchase as much as 20 billion yuan (3.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the Chinese government bonds in the interbank market in January 2012.

Gold holdings of the South Korean central bank were lifted by 30 tons last year to 84.4 tons at the end of 2012. The bank bought additional 20 tons in gold bullion in February this year. Endi

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