Korea- like Japan, Korea in the late 1960s needed to mobilise domestic capital to facilitate long-term, stable financing of large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects. The securities investment industry naturally attracted special attention and the Securities Investment Trust Business Act (SITBA) was passed in 1969, to allow the setting up of contractual-type investment trusts, and the first of these, Korea Investment Corporation, was launched that year. Under SITBA, which was implemented by related Presidential Decrees and Enforcement Ordinances, the Ministry of Finance and Economy had, by 1989, authorised three investment trust companies to undertake operations nationwide and five in provincial areas to distribute investment trusts in Seoul and in their respective specified regional areas.

FundsGradual reform of the financial markets began in the mid-1990s and restrictions on the establishment of new investment trust companies were lifted in 1996, only for the currency crisis of late 1997 to reverse the growth that had been achieved. Corporate-type investment funds, labelled SICs - Securities Investment Companies - and referred to as mutual funds, were introduced in late 1998 under the SICA - Securities Investment Companies Act. Earlier that year, responsibility for the approval and supervision of financial companies passed from the Ministry of Finance and Economy to the newly-established Financial Supervisory Commission and its enforcement arm, the Financial Supervisory Service. Matters of policy and the making or amending of laws and regulations remained with the Ministry. Both STILE and SICK were upgraded by amendments in April 2002 and implemented by Enforcement Decrees on 26 September that year. Significant among the changes that were introduced was the role of KITTS- Korean Investment Trust Companies Association. KITTS had been established under the STILE in 1996 to represent the management companies but, since the amendment, is now the responsible body for formulating and revising the standard trust deed and is the body that managers must notify when they set up funds within the scope of the standard deed. STILE, SICK and the investment advisory part of the Securities Exchange Act were replaced in August 2003 by AMBER - the Indirect Investment Asset Management Business Act, a comprehensive law based on STILE to combine the previous legislation.

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