Amid the global financial crisis, with acute awareness of the importance to revamp the overall economic structures in an effort to prevent spread of financial defaults in the markets, the Korean government has decided to pursue quick and effective restructuring measures.

The market environment of current crisis, however, is different from that of the 1997 Asian crisis in that there are no major defaults realized in the market, and this makes it more difficult for the government to push forward with one time, full-fledged corporate restructuring as back then.

Also, as the global economy has uniformly entered a drastic downturn, the expected efficacy of corporate restructuring progrmas especially in eliminating market uncertainty appears rather limited.

With such understanding, the Korean government has built the consensus for the importance of taking clear stances and establishing firm principles in pursuing corporate restructuring in order to maximize the change of its successful outcome.

Accordingly, the officials from relevant ministries worked jointly to draft restructuring strategic directions and key action plans, and they were finalized on February 19, 2009 through the discussions at the Presidential Economic Crisis Management Committee meeting.

* Please refer to the attached PDF for details.