South Korea Seeks to Boost Financial Markets but Struggles with Strict Controls on Won Trading
• South Korea seeks to boost global profile of financial markets but struggles with tight currency restrictions that frustrate investors and traders • Arcane cross-border transaction rules, daily reporting requirements, and broker limitations make doing business costly and slow • Extending won trading hours to cover London is small step; 20 foreign banks have applied to join interbank market • Reforms aimed at getting South Korea into top-tier indexes to attract significant inflows, but changes unlikely to boost won trading • Heavy focus on surveillance stems from memories of past financial crises, but restrictions on won trading exceed those of major currencies globally