Korea has recouped 61.8 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 104.3 trillion won (US$94.5 billion) in public funds as of the end of September, according to the Financial Services Commission (FSC).
The September figure marks a 0.2 percentage point rise on-month, and a 6.4 percentage point increase from the recovery rate at the end of 2008. The government recouped 423.7 billion won last month.
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 3.55 trillion won, or 57.3 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 September, it recouped 119.4 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)