Among Asia's crisis-hit economies struggling for recovery and reform, South Korea may well claim it leads on both counts. Interest rates, the currency and equity prices have markedly improved from the depths of a year and half ago. A return of market confidence is also in evidence as foreign capital flows in and access to international credit is reopened, albeit selectively. Upon completing his first year in office in February, President Kim Dae Jung had good reason to declare that, financially at least, the country was out of danger.
The International Monetary Fund now forecasts a sharp GDP rebound to 2 percent growth for 1999 from last year's contraction of more than 6 percent. Yet, the structural and social issues exposed by the crisis remain as formidable as before. Unemployment continues to bulge, and now threatens to reach the 9 percent level. President Kim is under pressure to show results, most of all, in restructuring the "chaebol" -- the country's powerful, but overstretched and debt-ridden,business groups.
Reform has gone forward more visibly in the financial sector and labor relations. Progress would not have been possible without Mr. Kim's embrace of the IMF's tough and unpopular prescriptions for reform in return for an international bailout package of nearly $60 billion. Having long been a victim of South Korea's authoritarian politics until saved by the democratization of the late '80s, the reformist leader virtually identified his goals with the IMF-World Bank's calls for open, transparent and accountable institutions.