Financial authorities made a verbal intervention on the foreign exchange market over a drastically weakened won, prompting the won-dollar exchange rate to fall to the 1,450 range after it started at 1,484.9 won per dollar, Wednesday. “Excessive weakness of the won is not desirable … and the market will see soon the government’s strong commitment and its capacity for comprehensive policy execution,” officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Bank of Korea said in their joint statement. The verbal intervention came after the Korean won closed at 1,480.10 against the dollar on Monday and 1,483.6 on Tuesday. This marked the first time since 2009, the peak of the Great Recession, that the exchange rate ended two consecutive days in the 1,480 range.