There is no suggestion that Abrdn has sold Korean holdings as a result of recent political developments. 

Yoojeong Oh, manager of Abrdn Asian Income Fund (AAIF ), reflects on the impact for South Korea from president Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief declaration of martial law on 3 December.

This is the last excerpt from our virtual event with Abrdn Asian Income this month. You can watch the previous short videos on ‘Smart chip giant TSMC’ and ‘Asia: Home to strong dividend stocks’ or catch up with the whole ‘Big Broadcast’ featuring Oh’s full presentation and her answers to questions from Citywire’s Gavin Lumsden and the audience. 

Can’t watch now? Read the transcript

Yoojeong Oh:

The only two companies that we own in Korea are memory chip manufacturers. These are very much global exporters so, they’re not so beholden to the domestic policies of what’s going on in Korea. Interestingly, I was in Korea when this was going on. I was there for research to meet with our holdings and the day I left, I left in the morning and martial law was imposed that night. I’d already left, but some of my friends were still there and before martial law is normally triggered when there’ a big event. There’s a coup against the government or there’s some uprising, there’s actually laws that get triggered when martial law is imposed. Including curfews. Suddenly they weren’t allowed to go outside. The hotels imposed curfews on everybody.

Of course, as you know, it was lifted pretty soon after. It didn’t even last overnight. I think it wasn’t a great reflection of the stability of politics in a country like Korea, that wants to be migrated up from emerging market to developed market. I think it’s also not been ideal because that country has been trying to do this value up programme to boost shareholder returns for investors in the market over the past year. I just think when you have political uncertainty like this, then a lot of people tend to sit on the sidelines. So, we might see that that value up discount narrowing for the Korean corporates may take a bit longer.