Chang Yong Rhee: Korea's integrated policy framework story - extending into the effective lower bound era
Text of the 2025 Michel Camdessus Central Banking Lecture by Mr Chang Yong Rhee, Governor of the Bank of Korea, at the International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, 18 September 2025.
The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.
Thank you for inviting me today-it's a tremendous privilege to give a speech in honor of Mr. Michel Camdessus, the longest-serving and highly esteemed Managing Director in the IMF's history. Seeing the distinguished speakers who came before me, I feel humbled to be standing at this podium today. Perhaps being an IMF alumnus worked in my favor, and I want to express my special gratitude to Managing Director Georgieva for giving me this opportunity.
When choosing today's topic, the Integrated Policy Framework (IPF) came to mind without much deliberation. As Paul Krugman noted, it shows "IMF's surprising intellectual flexibility," and I believe the IPF is a significant achievement the Fund can be proud of.3 As Director of the Asia and Pacific Department, I witnessed this process closely, observing the countless rigorous debates by the Fund's economists, and the difficult task of reconciling sharp differences among member countries. The IPF was built on the intellectual drive and insight of David Lipton, Gita Gopinath, and Tobias Adrian in the early stages, and it may not have become the Fund's official view without MD Lagarde's and MD Georgieva's deep empathy for the challenges facing emerging market economies.