The good news is that South Korea’s capital markets are sophisticated, safe, large and, last year at least, are growing even larger. The not-so-good news is that the equity and debt capital markets are stuck in something of rut, while derivatives trading in particular is still well below its peak of a few years ago.
While the sector’s self-regulatory organisation, the Korea Financial Investment Association (Kofia), tends to accentuate the positive, consultancy firms such as Roland Berger and the Korea Capital Market Institute (KCMI) tend to be more blunt about the negative.
