Financial liberalization or state capitalism? The developmental state and the special purpose bond market in South Korea

Abstract

ABSTRACT South Korea's state-guaranteed bond market was nearly half the size of its sovereign bond market in 2022, and in the early 2000s, it was nearly twice the size of the latter. What explains the overwhelming prominence of this fixed-income market? This paper finds that the prominence of this market is a path-dependent consequence of developmental legacies and the Asian Financial Crisis. State-guaranteed bonds allowed the state to circumvent conditionalities that limited the state's ability to access domestic savings for policy objectives and helped shield the newly established sovereign bond market from premature supply pressure. This finding demonstrates that the state not only supports or creates markets but also uses markets to maintain its influence against external pressure. It also explains how the South Korean state was able to maintain its developmental policies after market liberalisation by tracking the post-crisis flow of domestic savings.