Prime Minister Chung Hong-won visits the Korea Asset Management Corp. where the National 

Happiness Fund is managed to help those who have problems 

with their financial debts guided by KAMCO Chairman Chang Young-chul.

Korea Asset Management Corp. (KAMCO) has been operating the National Happiness Fund since March to help out those struggling under financial debts, and by Sept. 30 some 170,000 people applied for debt relief from the Fund.

Around 3,600 financial firms that are members of the Fund reported that they assumed the defaulted debts from 941,000 people and have been working on the recovery of their credit standings.

KAMCO has been helping out those with poor credit ratings since 2004 with the One Mind Finance and Hope Collection to recover their financial health and so far some 3.18 million people with debts totaling 43.5 trillion won have been under KAMCO’s care.

Chairman and CEO Chang Young-chul of KAMCO

KAMCO has so far managed to reduce the amount of debt for some of them, cut the interest rates on their debts, and helped them find jobs so that they can meet their financial obligations. So far, 1.75 million financial defaulters with debts amounting to 16 trillion won have benefitted from KAMCO’s assistance.

Since last year, KAMCO has also been extending its helping hands to SMEs to get on their own feet financially by taking over 5.5 trillion won of their debts from the Technology Guarantee Fund and the Small and Medium Business Promotion Corp. and allowing them to repay them in eight years of installments.

KAMCO has also helped out 113,830 credit guarantors to the tune of 13.2 trillion won so that they can recover their business operation bases during the six month period from July 1 to Dec. 31 this year.

As these efforts show, KAMCO has been steadfast in doing its job fully since its launch in 1962 as the first financial default clean up organization in Korea, coming through such huge financial crises as the foreign exchange crisis, the credit card crisis, the financial crisis, and recent household debt problem, and making the financial market sound by doing its part as a financial safety pin to safeguard the national economy and help the people outside the mainstream financial market.

During the Foreign Exchange Crisis of 1997, KAMCO ploughed in 39.2 trillion won to clean up the financial assets in default and recovered 48.1 trillion won — more than 123 percent of the fund used to save the defaulted assets.

KAMCO has also been engaged in exporting its know-how on saving defaulted assets and helping defaulters to recover their credit standings by creating model cases and providing consultation services abroad.

KAMCO hosted the International Public Asset Forum in May to share its experiences with asset management with organizations and to jointly tackle economic problems in Asia.

The asset management corporation is determined to be a top advanced public financial entity trusted by the people by preventing the financial crises before they develop with its reformative future strategies.