Korea has recouped more than 61 percent of the public funds it spent to bail out troubled financial firms during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, the financial regulator said Friday.
The country has retrieved 103.9 trillion won ($92.8 billion), or 61.6 percent, out of a total of 168.7 trillion won in public funds at the end of August, according to the Financial Services Commission (FSC).
The August recovery figure was unchanged from the previous month. The government recouped 9.5 billion won last month, compared with 289.9 billion retrieved in July.
The South Korean government had poured massive amounts of taxpayer money into local financial institutions to rescue them from bankruptcy when the financial crisis erupted in late 1997.
Meanwhile, the watchdog said the country has retrieved 3.43 trillion won, or 55.4 percent, of a total of 6.19 trillion won pumped into the financial system to stave off market instability in the aftermath of the 2008 global credit crunch. In August, it recouped 608.2 billion won.
Korea manages two tranches of public funds. The latter, created in 2009, aims to bolster the health of the local financial sector through purchases of soured loans and assets of bankrupt firms. (Yonhap)