Kwon,+Joung+Chan+(Rubin)BlockD

/ The Crisis of IMF in Korea \ The IMF (International Monetary Fund) IMF lends countries certain amount of money to provide temporary financial support, but IMF made Korean foreign investment to financial risks.

This is the current logo of IMF. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7e/International_Monetary_Fund_logo.svg/365px-International_Monetary_Fund_logo.svg.png

**Interviews and data** **This was an Interview with my father (Primary Source)** (Introduction skipped) Me: The IMF crisis in Korea occurred during 1997. Did you have any business before, during or after that time? Father: During the year of 1998, I started a small business, trying to earn some money for the family. The business was quite easy and smooth, no failure. It was going well and I was earning some money. Money started getting transferred from people to people, companies to companies and from countries to countries. This kind of over-capacity led to over-borrowing money. Politicians needed money for their political campaigns and the financial groups also needed money funding for their expansions. The interest massively increased, and other countries led capital outflow in Korea. The economy went to a level where most of the people lost their jobs and companies, including myself. Explaining this process easier, so you can understand is: employees had to be paid, but dollars ran out in the bank. So more money had to be borrowed. As the crisis became more at risk and the economy going down, people had to be cut down in order to make profit rather than losing money. Me: What happened after the IMF impacted Korea? Father: The crisis led to a chain effect. Lets say country A needed money so they try to borrow it from country B. Country B also needs money so they borrow it from country C and so on and so on. It was linked lots of countries together in a bad situation. When I was a business man in the epidemic, some people were dying from debt. Some town people gathered all the gold, they had from jewelry, and sold for money. Me: Was there a event or anything that changed the whole story of your business career? Father: Well, there was one thing that changed my business. It was the choice that was disagreed by the whole company. Around the end of 1998 and 1999, the crisis and the panic was going lower. The economy was slowly recovering but it wasn't good as well. Then I decided to build another company. I think it was a smaller one before the crisis, just in case. When we had a meeting, I suggested to take a business trip to China. Every single employee disagreed. They said its too early, the crisis might come back and we have to get prepared for those kind of situations. But I still decided to take a trip to China. We needed orders to ship items and to trade and there was nothing to lose, because all the items in China was very cheap. That was my first trip to China. When I arrived, I checked with the city market, other business people and realized that this can be a success. So I contacted the manager and it was successful! Orders were flowing in and we actually go working. It felt great! That is kinda how the story changed. Me: Wow! I guess you had a comeback from the IMF crisis. Thanks dad! **The recovery from the IMF Crisis (Secondary Source)** In the early 1990s, other export company constantly borrowed short-term loan, in order for a long-term investments from foreign banks. There were some positive sides, such as profits increasing, but financial groups were struggling on debt. They realized it might be a chance, so they began to borrow even more. However, profit attraction decreased and the domestic and foreign investor realized they should avoid contact with this economic epidemic. They moved their investments away from Korea. It was estimated that the debt increased and it was around 57 billion US dollars, which was shocking to the Koreans. Korean currency fell by 70%. It was the same year when South Korea joined the OECD. Interest rates rapidly increased and was in recession. It was very critical to most Koreans and how awful it was to live a life during a economic crisis. One of the main causes was that the Korean Government couldn't handle and take care of foreign currency properly at that time, and that some enterprise became too aggressive about development. Rushing was one key factor. After about three years, the IMF economic crisis ended (about at the year 2000) Source of Primary - My father

Source of Secondary - http://www.apcss.org/Publications/Ocasional%20Papers/OPKorea.html

Roles of the Historian Detective - In order to prove that IMF changed our family's life, I researched what the economic crisis from the IMF on Korea was really about. I interviewed my father how it felt like to lose a company, struggle on debt but comeback with one simple choice. I gathered data from my father's interview (primary) and found a website explaining deeper about the crisis online (secondary). Collecting data wasn't hard; however, where to begin was the question. Where do I begin from. It was such a wide subject. Should I start from the past and find how it started? Or, just right away go in about how it impacted? Or maybe how the economy was recovered? The line of order was just not easy enough for me to grab. Then I realized I had to be the "interpreter." Interpreter - In order to write something about history, I realized that its hard to understand if you just read articles. I had to actually know about that time of history and actually imagine myself in it. My father helped me visualize how it might have felt like to live through the crisis. I wanted to see how it really was to live off of small money and how you had to carry a big bag of work to pay the debt. The deeper I went, it got more confusing but it interested me how wide the point of view about the crisis was. I focused on looking at the crisis as one of the person that lived through the crisis, and the one who saw it, in stead of living it. It was hard to do both, but the only way was to reach a deeper area of this event. It was a wide sea of information but I jotted some information down, and saw some parts that was mysterious to me. I tried to find why other countries couldn't help this crisis, but the difficulty of economics was beyond my knowledge. This led me to becoming a "judge." Judge - It was hard to choose which was real, my father's opinion or the opinions online. There were thousands of articles and there was one voice and thought from my father. The easiest way to find the most accurate source of information was to see the one that had the most common factors and views about this event. The closest together it was, the higher chance of it being accurate. But why did this matter to me? It was the past, I should I write about this? This made me become the "philosopher." Philosopher - This event/topic made me think, I should I write about this? Is it just because its a project for a grade? It was actually about how to look back at this event and to prevent it from happening again in the future. The IMF crisis ended around 2000 to 2001. After four years of suffering from the high amount of debt, the struggle was over. After four years of suffer, it was announced that it was actually, officially over. The Korean Organization had a meeting with the IMF so we can prevent this epidemic from happening again. This was why the question was difficult to answer. Why does it matter? It matters so we know the past, and predict the future. My father told me that taking one and that each step is important, but not to take more that amount of steps so we dont go too fast and lose track.