South Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance hosted a Korea economy investment briefing in New York, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Gu Yun-cheol, for senior executives from 13 major global financial institutions. The session set out the government’s policy direction on foreign exchange and capital market reforms to improve market access for global investors, alongside its ‘AI transformation’ agenda and measures to manage energy-price risks linked to the Middle East conflict. The ministry pointed to corporate governance and investor-protection measures, including three amendments to the Commercial Act and tax changes intended to strengthen dividend incentives, and linked these reforms to a recovery in market confidence and a more than doubling of the KOSPI since the new government took office in June 2025. Building on Korea’s 1 April inclusion in the World Government Bond Index, the government positioned MSCI developed-market index inclusion as the next objective and highlighted access-oriented reforms such as extending foreign exchange trading to 24 hours, building an offshore won settlement system, simplifying account-opening procedures, easing real-name and know-your-customer burdens, and expanding access to corporate and index information. On AI, it flagged expanded public support including a roughly 20% increase in the R&D budget and a tripling of the AI budget year-on-year, alongside efforts to build GPU, data and talent infrastructure and foster strategic technologies including small modular reactors. The ministry signalled that reforms across the foreign exchange and capital markets will be advanced at pace to support the MSCI objective, and it committed to ongoing engagement with investors, including addressing reported frictions and “unreasonable” regulations in coordination with relevant agencies as issues are raised.

Original source View in tracker