Korea Asset Management Corp. (KAMCO) celebrated the initial anniversary of the Happy People Fund in March, as 294,000 people have applied for restructuring of their financial affairs and 249,000 are getting their financial matters cleaned up, which is the triple the number originally projected when KAMCO initiated the program, KAMCO said recently.
The applicants wanted their 1.8 trillion won in debts rearranged, but they got 51.8 percent of their debts forgiven, more than 900 billion won or an average of 5.73 million won per applicant, KAMCO said.
The Happy People Fund has indirectly helped people in poor financial shape by arranging for them to find jobs through the Ministry of Employment. Some 1,086 found jobs through the Employment Success Package program and 43 received a special education on how to start businesses through the Small Commercial People Healing Camp program run by the Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA).
The Fund also provided support to those who did not apply for debt rearrangement through the Credit Recovery Committee. They got help taking care of financial problems including bankruptcies by repairing their credit situations with the financial institutions and the financial credit recovery programs run by the financial institutions themselves. Some 16,456 people had their financial problems solved through the indirect help of the Happy People Fund.
KAMCO also had its hand in cutting high interest rates for some 48,000 borrowers to around 10 percent per year from April of last year to March 24 this year, saving some 526.8 billion won in interest. Those who have loans from the Dream Loan Program were able to save 8.93 million won per borrower on average thanks to the interest cutting measures.
The Fund plans to provide help to college students who were unable to pay off their tuition loans through various means including the extension of the loan repayment period so that they would not default on their tuition loans. The Fund also plans to help individual borrowers who are having problems repaying their personal loans to financial institutions.
In the meantime, KAMCO held a workshop for its officers and staff led by President Hong Young-man to resolve that public organizations successfully undertake the government 3.0 program on April 18.
President Hong said the workshop will be an occasion for KAMCO to open and jointly own diverse information to help the livelihood of the people and open and share them jointly with other organizations through expanded communication and cooperation so that KAMCO will be at the forefront of leading the Creative Economy. He continued to say that those who meet with the people directly should understand what the 3.0 plan means and provide tailor-made services that the people really want through great effort.
The plan includes four major bases for KAMCO to achieve its core values in realizing the government 3.0 Plan with all KAMCO officers and staff by collecting their will for reform to undertake the government plan without fail. The four bases include openness, sharing information, communication, and cooperation.
The issues taken up at the workshop include the direction for the implementation of the government 3.0 plan, a successful sample of the implementation of the 3.0 plan, and cases that need supplementation in the realization of the 3.0 plan. At the end of the workshop, the Promotion Committee for the Government 3.0 Plan was launched.
KAMCO dispatched a team to the Asia Development Bank to transfer its experiences for resolving defaulted assets, which was seen as the result of the international society’s recognition for its achievement of early economic crisis resolution, especially its professional expertise and experience in such matters as techniques of resolving the defaulted assets.
