The politics of the Asian financial crisis in Malaysia and South Korea

This article seeks to answer the following research questions: Why did Malaysia and South Korea choose different economic policies to cope with the 1997 financial crisis? What caused or constrained them? Did they choose different policies, and under what contexts? For this, I examine structural determinants that led to the different policy choices including the nature of the economic crisis, regime types and political leadership. Meanwhile, many scholars have been less concerned with political factors in terms of the cause of the Asian financial crisis and its overcoming process. From the findings, this article argues that their different policy choices resulted from the interaction between economic and political factors. In particular, I argue that political leaders' leadership was the most crucial factor in the different policy choices of the two countries.