Korea's accession to the OECD: A history

In 2016 Korea celebrates 20 years or membership in the OECD. In the early 1980s, following a period of remarkably successful economic growth, it commenced a programme of financial liberalisation and then, from 1993, more general economic and regulatory reform. There were three major reasons for the change in approach. The first was the increasing international influence of the market and the second was growing international and domestic pressure for Korea to remove trade restrictions, increasingly important as the Uruguay Round negotiations led to the establishment of the WTO. A third reason was pressure from increasingly powerful industrial groups chaebols for liberalisation, especially as regards lifting the ceiling on their ownership of bank shares, greater freedom in foreign borrowing and raising the aggregate credit ceiling.