Deteriorations in jobs and other recent economic data are stoking fears of a crisis in South Korea, but experts say the economy is more likely to enter a long and gradual spiral downward, rather than a short-term, cyclical crisis, Yonhap reported. Youth unemployment, long-term unemployment, bankruptcy and corporate credit ratings downgrades are some of the indicators that have fallen to levels last seen in the Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998, which sent South Korea to near-bankruptcy. Some see them as reinforcing a popular theory that South Korea has a 10-year cycle of economic crashes—after the 1997-1998 crisis, a global financial meltdown triggered an economic crash in South Korea in 2008. Mindful of such concerns, Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho last week stressed the economy was not in a condition akin to the Asian crisis—locally referred to as the IMF crisis because South Korea was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund—or the 2008 crisis.
