TEHRAN - South Korea has received a waiver from the U.S. to continue importing Iranian crude oil, Bloomberg reported quoting a South Korean government official as saying on Monday.

As one of the Asia's biggest buyers of Iranian oil, South Korea has been pushing for "maximum flexibility" in trades with Iran since Trump started threatening Iranian oil customers for cutting ties with the Islamic republic.

"Petrochemicals are key to our economy, and we stressed that if we're hit by the Iran sanctions, it would pose grave challenges to our whole economy," the official said, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The United States said on Friday it would temporarily allow eight importers to keep buying Iranian oil after it re-imposed sanctions on the country's crude flows from Monday.

Other Iranian oil customers including Japan, China, India and Turkey have also been seeking waivers to sanctions to allow them to continue buying some of the country’s oil.

South Korea, the world's fifth-biggest crude oil buyer, mainly purchases an ultra-light form of crude oil from Iran known as condensate.

Seoul also won an exemption from the United States to continue financial transactions with the sanctioned Iranian central bank to facilitate oil imports, the official said.

EF/MA