SOUTH KOREA
"The bigger they are, the harder they fall," is a maxim that aptly describes South Korea's experiences—and those of many of the chaebol, the country's industrial conglomerates—during the Asian financial crisis. South Korea was one of the countries worst hit by the crisis, and its IMF-led emergency bail-out programme cost around US$60bn.
To its credit, South Korea has also been one of the most diligent countries in implementing post-crisis economic and financial reforms, and it is now reaping the rewards of these efforts. The country's financial sector is one of the region's strongest, combining greater openness with better regulation. It is a measure of the improvement in prudential standards that the crisis among overextended credit-card lenders in 2003 had almost no contagious effect on the broader financial system.
In addition, South Korea's economy is now more transparent and flexible, interest rates are lower, and foreign reserves—which at the height of the crisis in December 1997 were down to US8.9$bn—have risen massively, to US$243bn as of end-March 2007. Indeed, South Korea is typical of post-crisis Asian economies in that it now faces considerable difficulty in preventing further accumulation of foreign reserves and keeping its currency from appreciating. This is a concern for exporters, particularly given the current weakness of the yen, as South Korean industrial exporters compete with Japan in numerous sectors.
Despite the progress on reforms that South Korea has made, unfinished business remains. This is particularly the case with regard to the labour market, which is still rigid and prone to disruptive unrest.