The finance minister, Mr. Kang, initially backed a weak won to bolster exports.
Korean officials say the weak won and higher productivity give the country a competitive advantage in shipbuilding.
"We believe the government's tolerance for a weak won is waning," Wai Ho Leong, an economist at Barclays, wrote in a note to clients Friday.
The optimists think the weak won, by boosting exports, may help a bit; the pessimists say that GDP could actually shrink.
Hyundai Motor Company outshined its global rivals by reporting a record quarterly profit on Thursday, as a weak won helped overseas sales and government incentives increased domestic demands for cars.
Korean companies are moving full speed into handset production, and the weak won will help them penetrate Ericsson's markets.
In Korea, Hyundai Motor Company, which also makes Kia models, is having better luck partly because a weak won is in its favor.
For example, South Korean electronics giant Samsung, taking advantage of weak won against dollars, has been selling drives for about $95 a drive, when a similar drive was selling only three months ago for more than $125 a drive.
It's a veritable two-headed monster: Where the government's case may be weakest, win-at-all-costs prosecutors may be most tempted to teach witnesses, in the pithy formulation of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, "not only to sing, but also to compose".
Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller, David and Goliath, asks how and why the weak win far more often than we expect.
