Since the financial crisis in 1997-98, Korea has made major progress in financial, and corporate sector reform - the supervisory and regulatory regime for the financial sector has been substantially strengthened, and recent reforms helped achieve a high degree of observance of international...

This Selected Issues paper for the Republic of Korea focuses on the role of monetary policy in the current context of slowing growth and rising inflation pressures. Korea has not remained immune to the global slowdown, and with the cycle turning downward, the trade-off between inflation and...

Korea’s statistics are generally of a high quality, and reflect a significant improvement since the last Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes. Korea’s adherence to internationally accepted statistical practices requires cross-cutting recommendations, and the development of a...

Korea has enjoyed strong growth owing to rapidly increasing exports and consumption. Potential growth is slowing as the population ages, whereas social polarization is growing. Korea should implement plans to build an advanced financial system and improve service productivity by opening the...

This note is on Korea’s transition to a knowledge-based economy, the prospects and challenges ahead, and the development of its financial sector. Assessment of recent government initiatives to develop capital markets has been presented. The note discusses restrictions on Chaebol ownership of...

This 2009 Article IV Consultation highlights that like other open economies, Korea was hard hit by the global financial crisis during the last quarter of 2008. The authorities responded with a timely and comprehensive set of financial market and macrostabilization measures. Executive Directors...

This Selected Issues paper evaluates the size of fiscal multipliers in Korea using the IMF’s Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model calibrated for Korea. The sensitivity of the results to a number of key factors is explored. Based on this, the impact of the recent fiscal stimulus packages...

This report assesses Korea’s data dissemination practices against the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) and is complemented by an in-depth assessment of the quality of the key macroeconomic datasets for the national accounts, prices, government finance, monetary, and...

This Selected Issues paper focuses on some of the key stylized facts of Korean business and export cycles over 1960–2001, and calculates a chronology for the classical cycle in these series by applying a variant of the Bry and Boschan (1971) cycle-doling algorithm. It highlights that the...