The Korean won fell on Wednesday on intervention concerns and the Taiwan dollar dropped on sales from importers and insurance firms as the wider market largely held steady against the dollar.
Choi Hee-nam, director of the Korean finance ministry's foreign exchange market division, said authorities were concerned that the won's strength against the yen would hurt exporters.
This undermined the won as dealers grew wary of official intervention to curb the won's strength.
The won shed almost half a percent in local trade to 1,039.2 per dollar and pulled away from a seven-week high around 1,031.6 struck on Tuesday.
It also edged off Tuesday's 7-year peak against the yen around 8.6590.
"We had verbal intervention last week as well but there doesn't seem to be any indication that the authorities are putting their money where there mouth is," said John Cairns, head of research at IDEAglobal in Singapore.
"Obviously the yen/won cross rate has been moving aggressively, but the dollar/won level doesn't seem so worrying."
Analysts said the won was supported against the yen by news this week of a Japanese share offering by South Korean steelmaker POSCO.
POSCO is expected to raise $690.6 million from the offering.
The Taiwan dollar eased almost half a percent to 33.668 per US dollar as strong demand from importers and insurance companies for the US currency outweighed support from foreign capital inflows.
Asia's other currencies were steady to slightly firmer, helped by a slight recovery in the yen from Tuesday's 27-month lows against the dollar.
The Thai baht steadied from a sell-off on Tuesday, but sentiment towards the currency was slightly bearish after a court suspended the privatisation of state-run power producer EGAT PCL.
A Thai court on Tuesday suspended the partial privatisation of EGAT on the eve of its $855 million initial public offering, Thailand's largest.
Analysts said worries about outflows of foreign money from the Thai stock market could weigh on the baht although an improvement in the country's economy should act as a buffer to any currency weakness.
"The EGAT news is negative in terms of reforms and the outlook for investment returns," said Craig Chan, a currency strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong. "So this is naturally a negative for the equity market and the baht."
The Indonesian rupiah shrugged off news the central bank expected double-digit inflation through most of next year following last month's sharp rise in fuel prices.
The rupiah was trading at about 10,000, about a fifth of a percent firmer compared with Tuesday's late Asian trading levels.
Dealers said aggressive monetary tightening by Indonesia's central bank continued to support the rupiah. Bank Indonesia raised the BI rate by a hefty 125 basis points to 12.25 percent at the start of the month.
"High interest rates are preventing the rupiah from weakening too much," said a Jakarta trader.
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