Next BOK chief must find balance

Shin Hyun-song, formerly of the Bank for International Settlements' Monetary and Economic Department, has been tapped to lead Korea's central bank as incumbent Gov. Rhee Chang-yong's term ends in August. Shin, 67, will undergo a pro forma parliamentary hearing to confirm his nomination. He is a noted macroeconomist who earned his Ph.D. from Oxford and a purported Nobel Prize nominee. He has had an illustrious career, famously forecasting the 2008 global financial crisis at the 2006 annual International Monetary Fund (IMF) conference. In 2005 he served as a resident scholar at the IMF, and in 2006 he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has also taught at top foreign universities such as Oxford and Princeton. Shin's career and expertise befit his new station at the Bank of Korea (BOK), as the Korean economy has grown leaps and bounds to rank as Asia's fourth-largest. Korea is a well-regarded manufacturing and technology hub. Even amid deep geopolitical volatility and as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, Korea's semiconductors have bolstered export numbers,

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