Republic of Korea Financial Sector Assessment Program Technical Note : Crisis Preparedness and Crisis Management Framework

Korea experienced a financial crisis in the late 1990s, which it overcame successfully. The rich experiences gained in handling past crises have helped in the establishment of a broad crisis management framework in Korea. The successful management...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: International Monetary Fund, World Bank
Language:English
en_US
Published: Washington, DC 2015
Subjects:
NPL
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/12/23790263/korea-financial-sector-assessment-program-crisis-preparedness-crisis-management-framework-technical-note
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21420
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Summary:Korea experienced a financial crisis in the late 1990s, which it overcame successfully. The rich experiences gained in handling past crises have helped in the establishment of a broad crisis management framework in Korea. The successful management of the 1997 financial crisis is reported to have been guided by the following principles: (i) bold and decisive measures are required to regain market confidence, rather than incremental ones; (ii) though Government will take the lead in crisis management initiatives, private capital should be encouraged to fully participate in the process; (iii) bank recapitalization and creation of a bad bank are not mutually exclusive options; the crisis management measures should be politically acceptable and have built-in exit strategies with clear time-frames; (iv) moral hazard should be minimized; and (v) all forms of financial protectionism must be rejected. Korea responded to the 2008 global financial crisis with certain policy measures that helped the Korean financial and real sectors to weather the immediate effects of the global crisis. These included policy and financial support to stabilize the money, securities, and bond markets, to extend financial support to corporate and financial entities, and to support small and medium enterprise (SME) and micro finance sectors. The authorities introduced a series of measures to contain the stress in Mutual Savings Banks (MSBs) during 2011 and 2012 and turned them around. The stress in MSBs was largely due to an extensive industry-wide exposure to troubled real estate project financing as well as shareholder and management misconduct.4 Faced with sector-wide stress and declining depositor confidence the financial sector regulatory agencies jointly announced new mitigating measures for the MSB sector.