Financial liberalisation, financial crisis and the new regime: The Korean experience

The financial restructuring measures under the IMF programme since the financial crisis far exceeded those carried out during the last 10 years in their depth and coverage. Starting from the observation that the financial crisis of late 1991 occurred after the well publicised entry into the OECD, this paper focuses on the relationship between the liberalisation and opening‐up of the financial market and the unprecedented financial crisis in Korea. It deals with issues raised as the Korean financial regulatory system moved from a controlled system to a market oriented system, and it reviews the policy initiatives of financial regulation and liberation in the period between the early 1980s and late 1991. This paper shows the importance of a multi‐staged system of information production and monitoring of the economy in the transformation into a market‐oriented system, suggesting that this transformation can damage the economy if related policies do not enhance the power of financial supervision to monitor the moral hazard behaviour of financial institutions.