Korea for Sale? Global Financial Crisis and the Systemic Risks in the Korean Banking Sector

Since World War II, the current global financial crisis has been unmatched in its scope and depth of negative impacts on the global economy. Advanced economies are going through the deepest recession since World War II, and the crisis is spilling over to emerging and developing countries. In his paper, Dr. Kang argues that, despite the Korean government’s tremendous achievement in transforming the country’s depressed financial markets into more globalized and open ones, the financial deregulation measures pursued by the government for the past decade have increased the vulnerability of the Korean banking sector to external shocks. He posits that we need a new regulatory framework at both the global and national levels to monitor and minimize the systemic risks, although such risks cannot be completely prevented, and it has to be done in a swift way. Please join KEI for this lunchtime program where Dr. Kang will discuss currency depreciation, outflow of foreign portfolio investments from the Korean stock market, reasons for the increasing short-term debt in the banking sector, and policy implications of all of the above. Dr. Kang’s presentation will be followed by an open roundtable discussion.