Financial authorities are strengthening coordinated efforts with banks, insurers and brokerages to prevent the Korean currency from weakening to 1,500 won relative to the U.S. dollar, part of a shift away from monitoring to supervisory intervention of both retail and corporate dollar demands, market watchers said Sunday. Financial service providers are instructed to curb dollar-focused marketing and incentivize dollar-to-won conversion, reflecting the belief that private-sector dollar hoarding is a significant issue driving the won's weakness. Whether this pressure will slow the won’s depreciation will become clearer in the weeks ahead. Skepticism lingers that financial institutions are able to reorient their business strategies, especially when factoring in currency stability considerations at the expense of near-term margins. According to financial market sources, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and Bank of Korea (BOK) have had several meetings with financial institutions recently to discuss the won's sustained depreciation. The currency weakening is driven in part, they say,