韓国における金融・企業セクターの改革

韓国財閥の生き残り戦略

抄録

This article explores how financial and corporate reform has been achieved in Korea in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. In the financial sector remarkable reforms were achieved for several years after the crisis. First, to reduce a huge volume of bad debt in the banking sector the government injected a total of 155. 3 trillion won of public funds by the end of 2001. As a result of this action, the non-performing loan ratio of the banking sector fell from 12. 9% at the end of 1999 to 1. 9% in 2004. Second, some bank mergers and restructuring of financial institutions through financial holding companies has been accomplished.
There are some arguments about how the Korean financial system should be developed. Some analysts have urged that the Korean financial system should evolve from a bank-based financial system to a capital market-based financial system. However, the underdevelopment of Korea’s capital market and problems related to transparency make such an evolution to a capital market based financial system difficult.
In the corporate sector, chaebols had lowered their debt-to-equity ratios to 200% by 1999, according to Korean government requirements. The government also required chaebols to overcome the problem of overdiversification. Chaebols exchanged some specific businesses on a large scale. Business consolidation through this type of deal had been proceeding since 1998.
Among the five largest chaebols, the LG Group started to restructure its group companies under the holding company system in 2001, and the SK Group began to introduce the holding company system in 2007. However, citizens’ groups monitoring the chaebols and state prosecutors have brought some lawsuits against the five largest chaebols. To elucidate these problems, drastic reform of the corporate governance structure of the chaebols is a key issue still to be addressed.