Robert F. Emery - Korean Economic Reform: Before and Since the 1997 Crisis

ROBERT F. EMERY

First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright Robert F. Emery 2001

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 2001088782

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-72180-7 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-72179-1 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-19409-7 (ebk)

Robert F. Emery served as a financial specialist on East Asia at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for 33 years until 1992. He also taught financial as well as other economic courses at a Washington, D.C., University for 28 years. He has served in recent years as a consultant at the World Bank and undertaken missions for the United States Agency for International Development to Tanzania and Bangladesh. Dr. Emery earned his Ph. D. in economics from the University of Michigan and is the author of many articles and four books: The Financial Institutions of Southeast Asia (1970), The Japanese Money Market (1983), The Money Markets of Developing East Asia (1991), and The Bond Markets of Developing East Asia (1997).

Several factors prompted the writing of this book. In response to a general enquiry that I made in early 1997 of an official at the Korean embassy in Washington, D.C., I was told that the most serious economic problem facing Korea was the need for reform of the financial sector. This was in essence confirmed by the establishment in January 1997 of the Presiden-tial Advisory Council for Financial Reform, popularly known as the Financial Reform Committee. In addition, six of Koreas top 30 corporate conglomerates filed for court protection during 1997 before the November 21, 1997, crisis erupted, indicating that Koreas economic problems were not solely financial. In view of Koreas importance in the world economy and its elevation in December 1996 to the status of an industrialized country by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, it also seemed appropriate to undertake a fairly detailed study by an independent observer of earlier reform efforts, the causes of the 1997 crisis, and the measures taken by Korea since then to deal with the countrys economic problems.