Some Policy Lessons from the Opening of the Korean Insurance Market

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Abstract
This article examines the recent dispute between the United States and the Republic of Korea over the opening of Korea's insurance market to U.S. companies. The article assesses the interests and motivations of both countries that lay behind the formal arguments presented during the negotiation process. It also analyzes whether the long-run interests of both developing and industrial countries would be well served by the approach to the opening of the market adopted in this case—sharing the rent while continuing to regulate the insurance market. The analysis suggests that the opening of a developing country's insurance market (or the wider financial services market) would serve the long-run interests of both developing and industrial countries only if it were accomplished in the context of overall domestic liberalization of the finance industry. “Opening” of the market, if this means only the sharing of the rents that were generated by regulation of the market, is unlikely to be beneficial to developing countries.

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