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This chapter considers the moral hazard stage of the relationship between Congress and the IMF and World Bank. The chief exogenous shocks came from the 1995 Mexican peso crisis and 1997 Asian financial crisis, which caused many to reevaluate the role of the IMF in preventing financial instability. The chief endogenous change came with Republican control of the House during the Bill Clinton administration, ushering in an era of divided government in reverse. The chapter argues that the Republicans had connected party ideology to a very specific legislative agenda during the election, tying committee chairs more tightly to the majority party. Congressional advocacy developed with the growing use of appropriations bills to alter the course of public policy. As the constituencies for the Bretton Woods institutions fractured or disintegrated, the results were extended funding delays and additional policy demands in the form of the Meltzer Commission, debt relief, shift in the use of concessional loans to grants, and debt relief. By the end of the stage when the Argentine crisis occurred, the IMF searched openly for a mission and the World Bank’s role appeared to be obsolete, given the volume and sophistication of disintermediated capital flows.

To what extent South Korea adopted neoliberal reforms and thus conformed to the pressures of globalization is explored in this chapter. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997, South Korea was compelled to adopt IMF-style liberalization policies and, by implication, to abandon economic nationalism. However, this chapter argues otherwise. The evolution of Korea’s economic trajectory since World War II shows that no real shift has taken place in Korea’s economic nationalist trajectory despite the adoption of Segyehwa (iglobalization policies) in the early 1990s incorporated under outward foreign direct investments by Korean business followed by inward foreign investment. Despite deep international economic integration, the capacity of the Korean state has not diminished nor has the traditional nationalist development trajectory reversed. The Korean state remains developmental, neo-mercantilist, and economically nationalist.

The idea of an Asian model for development grew with the rise of the “tiger” economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, dubbed “the East Asian Miracle” by the World Bank. This model came under stress in the regional crisis of 1997, but the idea of Asia's rise has resumed given the region's rapid recovery and the persistence of Asian growth rates despite the 2008 global crisis. Yet the idea that Asia might serve as a blueprint for development is still contested, and there are questions about future sustainability. With many Asian economies still export-based, Asians must find ways to increase their own domestic consumption and intra-Asian demand. The region must also confront growing inequality and environmental damage from rapid industrialization. Recognizing these challenges, Asia's development will be neither predestined nor smooth. Asia's future, even if on a good trajectory, will be a period of change and challenge.

This chapter considers the impact of the 1997 Asian financial crisis on marriage and migration trends in the region. The precipitous economic downturn, financial collapse, and subsequent draconian restructuring agreement imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggested to the Chosŏnjok the seeming fragility of South Korea's standing in the economic world order. In response, Chosŏnjok migrants have sought what they consider to be more stable parts of the world, such as Japan, to carry out their strategies of transnational marriage and mobility. South Korean men, meanwhile, have turned primarily to Southeast Asia as an alternative source of foreign brides. In thinking about the implications of these geographic shifts and the unprecedented departure from notions of ethnic endogamy and homogeneity they appear to signal, the chapter offers some final thoughts on transnational kinship making (and faking) as an arena in which people confront, contest, reproduce, and rework understandings about national belonging, their kinship and gender relations, and their place in the shifting global order.