Photo: Shin Hyeon-song at the Bank of Korea. Credit: News1.
On April 21, President Lee Jae-myung 이재명 대통령 approved the appointment of Shin Hyeon-song 신현송 as the 28th chief of the Bank of Korea 한국은행 총재, where he will head South Korea’s central bank for a four-year term. The 66-year-old Shin was born in Daegu 대구 and educated in England, where he earned his undergraduate, masters and doctorate degrees at Oxford University.
Prior to his appointment, Shin was a well-respected macroeconomics scholar and high-ranking official at the Bank for International Settlements, the international cooperative body for the world’s central banks. Shin gained renown in 2006 during his time with the International Monetary Fund, when he diagnosed that unsound mortgage backed securities could cause a global financial crisis, predicting the 2008 global financial crisis.
Shin’s calls for preemptive action to stabilize the rate of inflation and the financial system mean he is considered a hawkish central banker. With the US-Iran War driving the price of commodities upward, the Bank of Korea under Shin could raise the benchmark interest rate to combat inflation.
