Including around 3 trillion won ($2.68 billion) that the financial regulator hopes to retrieve from state-owned Woori Bank, the South Korean government is yet to recoup a total of 56.6 trillion won worth taxpayers’ money used for company bailouts.

According to the Financial Services Commission on Tuesday, the regulator has recovered 112.1 trillion won of the 168.7 trillion won of public funds injected into the private sector since 1997. 

In the first half of this year alone, 470.8 billion won was collected, reaching 66.5 percent of its goal of recovering all its bailout provisions.

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the government and state-owned institutions created a fund based on the government-guaranteed bonds to purchase soured bonds or assets of private corporations to strengthen their financial soundness. They also helped bail out financial firms in 2008 by forming another fund to reduce the impact of the global financial crisis.

The FSC classifies money provided by the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp., Korea Asset Management Corp., the Bank of Korea and the central government as public funds used for bailouts.

The KDIC spent 110.9 trillion won on the bailouts, the largest amount, the FSC data showed. The institution has recouped 55.4 trillion won so far.

“The taxpayers’ money has been playing a crucial role for the last two decades whenever the Korean economy was teetering on financial crises,” said an official at the Public Fund Management Committee under the Financial Services Commission.

The country’s first 64 trillion won worth public fund in 1997 based on government bond issuances to salvage companies hit by the foreign exchange crisis. Another 40 trillion won was injected in 2000 to 2001 to help restructure firms impacted by the bankruptcy of Daewoo Group. The National Assembly enacted the Public Fund Management Act in 2001 and started overseeing the management of the bailout funds.

“Measures to recollect the funds were first discussed in 2002,” the official said. “The state lenders could retrieve significant amounts of money from privatization of major financial institutions.”

Woori Bank was one of those financial institutions, established with a total of 12.8 trillion won worth taxpayers’ money in 1998. KDIC currently holds a 51.06 percent stake in the bank. The Public Fund Management Committee announced on Monday its plan to put a 30 percent stake of the KDIC’s on sale with a deadline due by the end of the year in a bid to privatize the bank and recover the rest of the public funds.

The KDIC has recovered 8.3 trillion won so far, and aims to pull out about 2 trillion won to 3 trillion won as early as possible.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)