The other night I was discussing with my friend Seung-bae Korea's apparently rather efficacious management of the current world financial crisis – of all the OECD countries, Korea has experienced the least recession and least impact on economic statistics such as growth and recession, although there has been some inflation, linked to the somewhat-managed slow-motion "crash" of the won (currency) a year and a half ago.
My friend Seung-bae made the following wry observation: "we made our down payment a decade ago." This is a reference to Korea's "IMF" crisis that occured in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. That's true – from everything I've read, that was quite a mess. What's perhaps disorienting or odd, at least to me, is the idea that the country's government and economic leadership may have actually learned some lessons from that experience that have allowed them to better weather the current crisis. To me, it doesn't seem like very often that economic leadership is actually capable of learning lessons.