“It’s something we’d all like to see. But it will be difficult,” chirped the beleaguered South Korean president, Lee Myung Bak, over a friendly cup of coffee at a Seoul hotel this morning.

His comments could have referred to a broad range of hopes and fears, because this is a man with an uncomfortable load on his mind at the moment. There is an awful lot he’d certainly like to see but that could prove extremely tricky to pull off: North Korea playing ball over nuclear disarmament, an economy in far better shape than it is now and his once mighty approval ratings back where they were eight months ago, to name just three.

In fact, he was musing on the idea of a single Asian currency.

And for an arch-conservative recently elected on an openly nationalist ticket in a country as ferociously patriotic as Korea, not dismissing the concept out of hand was pretty bold stuff. Mr Lee is president of a fiercely vocal people who have spent much of the past few months bellowing their disgust at his administration. The idea of giving up the won in favour of some putative all-powerful Asian currency will play, symbolically and politically, as badly as the idea of joining the euro did in the UK circa 1990.

From Mr Lee’s position, though, an Asian version of the euro must look extremely attractive this morning. His central bank has spent the past couple of months thanklessly stoking the currency markets with foreign reserve dollars in a gambit to support the falling won. On Monday it tanked again, dropping to a 46-month low against the greenback. Economists are helpfully telling him he must either stop the intervention and watch Korean industry writhe, or stick to it and risk leaving the country’s foreign exchange reserve position dangerously flimsy.

The Korean economic miracle – an export-led machine with unique vulnerabilities to global commodity markets – has been knocked sideways by inflation. Korea’s hoped-for role as the tasty filling in a China-Japan economic sandwich could be short-lived if Chinese industry leapfrogs up the value chain in the way it clearly wants to.

Becoming part of a big, strong Asian currency, however, might solve much of this. Inflation or economic downturn would be walloped by the manoeuvres of a heavyweight Asian central bank. If enough nations were signed up to the idea, the unit (whatever clever name it was given) would be innately more stable than the sum of its legacy parts. Little Korea would suddenly be a founder member of a currency easily capable of rivalling the US dollar and the euro and in which global commodity trade might one day be denominated.

The idea was raised earlier this year at a summit of the Asia Development Bank, and many Asian economists are openly questioning the shape of a future world where the US dollar is relegated from its position as the default currency for nearly everything.

The Korean president was sipping his coffee ahead of the J-Global Forum on New Asia: a serious talking shop on regional diplomacy for Chinese, Korean and Japanese politicians and opinion makers. On several occasions throughout the day, the question of closer economic union in Asia was raised: the boldest voice called for an EU-style “borderless economic community" in Asia within 40 years.

Perhaps the most significant phrase used by Mr Lee this morning was “we’d all”: he may have a tin ear for politics, but he probably knows that he is not the only person toying with the single Asian currency ploy as the financial clouds darken.

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