Seoul: The International Monetary Fund will close its South Korean office as part of a broader restructuring and downsizing of the Washington, DC-based lending institution, the office said today.

In a statement distributed through South Korea's Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the office said it will close when the term of current IMF resident representative Meral Karasulu ends in September.

"While Korea is an important economy in both the region and the global economy, it is also now a mature and resilient economy, and has fully recovered from the Asia crisis," the statement said. "Given the importance of the Korean economy, our decision to close the office was a difficult one."

In November 1997,South Korea, its economy reeling from an economic contagion that had already swept through Thailand and Indonesia  asked the IMF for a USD 19.5 billion loan.

South Korea ended up receiving a total USD 58 billion international bailout package arranged by the fund. The country, however, moved swiftly to reform its economy and ended up using only USD 30.2 billion of the offered assistance.

It eventually paid back the loans in full and ahead of schedule.

Still, the experience was so searing for South Koreans that the events came to be known as the "IMF crisis" for the role played by the fund.

The statement said that as a result of the restructuring, a number of resident offices in both Asia and other parts of the world would be shut down, with some of them remaining open to take on a wider regional role.

Source : PTI